UCI: Officials Consider Opening Public Health School
To cash in on "two of the fastest growing and most vital fields in health care," University of California-Irvine officials are considering opening schools in public health and pharmacology, the Orange County Register reports. Currently there only are 30 public health schools nationwide, including well-established programs at UCLA and UC-Berkeley. Ron LaPorte, deputy director of public health for the Orange County Health Care Agency, said that the community had expressed an interest in creating a local public health school. David Korn of the Association of American Medical Colleges agreed with the proposal, saying, "It's a good idea for a first-class university to build a first-class public health school." Noting that Orange County is home to several pharmaceutical companies, members on the pharmacy school panel said that those companies "could benefit from cutting-edge research" the school could produce (Saar/Robbins, 7/19).
Growing at UCSD
The UC Board of Regents today will decide whether to create a pharmacy school at the University of California-San Diego, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports. The program, which would accept about 20 students in fall 2001, would expand research at UCSD in pharmacogenomics, which tailors drug therapies for patients based on their individual genetic profiles. The UCSD program also would provide much needed pharmaceutical staffing at local health care facilities, Leslie Franz, director of communications for health sciences, said. "Right now, we're recruiting a lot of pharmacists from out of state to practice in California," she said. If approved, the pharmacy school at UCSD would be the second such program in the state's public university system (Parmet, 7/20).