Building a World Class Programme in Health Law and Policy
From the Spring 2000 issue of Nexus.
As Canada's health care system continues to face profound changes, the Faculty has intensified its commitment to health law and policy through the establishment of a comprehensive health law programme and two newly endowed academic chairs.
The Faculty has long been one of the most important centres of health law scholarship in the world, as a result of the pioneering work of professors Rebecca Cook and Bernard Dickens. The founding director of the International Human Rights Programme at the law school, Prof. Cook is also an adjunct lecturer at the School of Public Health at Columbia University. An expert in the area of biomedical ethics, Prof. Bernard Dickens is currently a vice-president of the World Association for Medical Law.
Now, two newly endowed chairs have precipitated a rapid expansion of the Faculty's research and teaching capacity in health law. The Dr. William M. Scholl Chair in Health Law and Policy and the Liberty Health Chair in Health Management Strategies form the pillars of an emerging, multi-faceted curriculum in health law and policy.
In the fall of 1999, the Faculty welcomed three new professors having interests in the health law and policy areas: Sujit Choudry, Colleen Flood, and Trudo Lemmens. These faculty members' research is focused on a broad array of health law issues. Under their leadership, course offerings in the field of medical jurisprudence and policy have broadened with the introduction of seminars on health system law and the legal and ethical implications of biotechnology.
Adding to the enriched faculty complement and course selection is the law school's new Health Law and Policy Seminar Series. Beginning in September 1999, the series hosted speakers from across North America, including leading experts from Columbia University, Boston University and Stanford.
This marked increase in activity in the area of health law would not have been possible without the generosity and vision of the Dr. Scholl foundation and Liberty Health. "These chairs will propel the health law programme forward at a rate which would have been inconceivable a few years ago," says Dean Ron Daniels. "Significant pressures on our current health care system make these gifts particularly timely, as the Faculty's health law programme aims to generate dynamic and interdisciplinary ideas about the range of legal, organizational and market changes necessary to ensure that Canadian citizens continue to enjoy a high standard of health care."
With the assistance of Brian Westlake '65, who introduced the Faculty to the Scholl Foundation, the foundation has made its largest Canadian gift ever in establishing the Dr. William M. Scholl Chair in Health Law and Policy. According to Doug Witherspoon, former head of Scholl's Canadian operations and a member of the Dr. Scholl Foundation's board, "The company was very successful in Canada and funding this chair was an opportunity to give back a little of Scholl's good fortune." Raised on a farm in Indiana, Dr. Scholl combined the cobbling skills he had learned from his grandfather with his medical education to build a successful international foot-care product business. Dr. Scholl started the Scholl foundation in 1947, leaving the bulk of his estate to it when he died at 85 in 1969. Today, the Foundation supports education, medicine, and initiatives for children.
A similar convergence of goals between the University of Toronto and Liberty Health brought about the creation of the Liberty Health Chair in Health Management Strategies, an endowed chair shared between the Faculty of Law and the Department of Health Administration in the Faculty of Medicine. As one of Canada's leading suppliers of supplemental health benefits for groups and individuals, Liberty Health's mission is to help Canadians live healthier, safer, and more secure lives. Gerry Berry, president of Liberty Health, indicated that the creation of the chair marked the start of
an academic partnership dedicated to improving the design and delivery of health services in Canada.
The Liberty Health Chair and the Dr. William Scholl Chair together will become the cornerstone of the Faculty's emerging interdisciplinary programme in health law and policy. They will form the core of a critical mass of scholars dedicated to research and teaching and allow the Faculty to play a significant role in this important field.
