Institute for Public Health receives $12-million donation

By Fabian Mayer, October 2 2014 —

The University of Calgary Institute for Public Health, now dubbed the O’Brien Institute for Public Health (OIPH) received a $12-million donation from Calgary philanthropists Gail and David O’Brien on Tuesday, Sept. 23.

OPIH scientific director William Ghali said the donation will help the institute continue its work on disease prevention and improving public health in Alberta.

“The new funding is really going to give us a solid base from which we can now increase our investment in people to undertake health and health-care projects and also to catalyze new initiatives,” Ghali said.

The institute is based in the U of C’s medical school and has members from the faculties of science, arts, social work and nursing.

“We’re interested in studying ways of keeping people healthy but also ways to make the health-care system better,” Ghali said.

The institute is publicly funded. However, Ghali said private donations allow them to be at the forefront of health-care research.

“They inject a flexibility into our funding model and they give us an ability to undertake more daring and bold initiatives,” Ghali said.

The institute was launched in 2010 and now has over 320 members. Recent projects include research on food policy, walkable cities and patient flow within health-care systems.