Libin Cardiovascular Institue of Alberta Celebrates 10 Years

https://libin.ucalgary.ca/libin10

The Libin Cardiovascular Institute of Alberta celebrated its ten year anniversary this year.  In 2004, the generosity of donors Alvin and Mona Libin and the coordination of Dean Eldon Smith, along with his team at the University of Calgary's Faculty of Medicine and collaborators within Calgary Health Region combined to create the internationally recognized centre for heart research.

The successes of the Institute over the past decade are clearly quantifiable.  A recent article on the institute's website notes that the original $15 million donation from the Libins has grown to over $50 million worth of philanthropy.  Libin researchers  have published over 2500 peer-reviewed publications, but the institute is more that just research and education.  As the web article states, "It is often said that Calgary is the best place in the country to have had a heart attack. That’s because we have achieved the highest 30 day post MI survival rate in the country, a result of integrating the university’s cardiovascular research enterprise with the regions care delivery mechanisms."

The following video features current UofC Medical Dean John Meddings, Alvin Libin, Director Todd Anderson, patients, and others speaking about integrating health care and research at the Institute, and gives an idea of the founding concept.  Alvin Libin notes that his personal connections with Dr. Eldon Smith, his family doctor who had come to the University of Calgary from Dalhousie in 1980, had much to do with the Institute's establishment.  Libin notes of Smith, "We became very good personal friends...he was also my doctor...We became involved in the idea of how we could get bigger better in heart at the Foothills hospital."  Smith is still very much in play with the Institute's vision, chairing the Strategic Advisory Board, and sitting on the board of Alberta Health Services.  The video closes with the message that the Libin Cardiovascular Institute is all about "people, people, people."

For more on the Libin Institute:
Click www.Libininstitute.org
Read Hearts, Minds & Vision: Roots of the Libin Cardiovascular Institute of Alberta
or Follow them on twitter @libininstitute

Tom Feasby: Honorary Doctor of Science from Western University, 2013

Dr. Tom Feasby, dean of Faculty of Medicine at the University of Calgary from 2007 to 2012, made the academic headlines in Eastern Canada recently when receiving an honorary degree from Western University. Feasby received a honorary Doctor of Science from the school where he served as a faculty member for fourteen years. He noted that “It was a proud moment to receive the degree from the university where one of my former trainees is now the dean of medicine.”




Feasby received his med degree from the University of Manitoba in 1969, and then did his residency in London. His Western connection came a few years later, when he taught in the Department of Neurological Sciences at Victoria Hospital.


Adela Talbot of Western News summed up Feasby's numerous career accomplishments:

Feasby is responsible for building one of Canada’s leading neuroscience departments, which now includes internationally prominent research programs in stroke, multiple sclerosis, brain tumours and peripheral nerve research.


He was vice-chairman of Academic Affairs at Capital Health (the Alberta Health Services), and associate dean of Clinical Affairs at the University of Alberta. Feasby also founded iCARE, a health services institute. Feasby served several years on the boards of directors of both the Canadian and American Neurological Associations, and currently serves on the board of the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research and the strategic advisory board of the Institute for Public Health.

He has authored or co-authored more than 160 refereed publications. Feasby was among the first to describe a form of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a devastating neuro-muscular disease in a number of co-authored papers.”

At the University of Calgary from 1991 to 2003, Feasby served as Head of the Department of Clinical Neurosciences while leading the Calgary Health Region's Department of Clinical Neurosciences. In Calgary, he founded both the Neuromuscular and ALS Clinics.

Last year, at the end of his period as University of Calgary dean, Dr. Feasby gave a talk at the June Convocation Speech, which drew on material from none other than legendary Canadian medical figure William Osler. The theme he spoke on was memory:



A series of pictures from Dr. Feasby's farewell party at the University of Calgary:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/35327065@N08/sets/72157629682600848

Bill Cochrane and the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame

On April 13, 2010 the 12th Induction Ceremony and dinner of The Canadian Medical Hall of Fame took place at Calgary. It was the first time that this prestigious event was ever held in this city, and one of the six inductees honored at the ceremony was Dr. William A. Cochrane, OC, AOE.  He was the founding Dean of the Medical Faculty, when the medical school opened in 1970.

  
The Canadian Medical Hall of Fame in London, ON has further produced an Alberta Medical Heritage video, which features the history of the two medical schools in this province as well as the larger history of medicine in Alberta. 
 
Deans from the Faculty of Medicine spanning four decades gathered for an intimate lecture on Friday, October-29, 2010 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first medical school class admitted into the Faculty. The room was filled as more than one hundred alumni, current faculty and students came together to listen to the speakers tell anecdotes, recall challenges and comment on the future growth of the school.

A Brief History of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Calgary

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The University of Calgary’s Faculty of Medicine is one of the younger medical schools in Canada, which had been created roughly forty-six years ago – in 1967. Primarily conceived as a higher learning institution to train family physicians, at a time when there was a perceived shortage, it has moved beyond this by evolving into a school that educates physicians for a great spectrum of activities: from primary care to specialty care; to careers in education, management, and research.

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The school has seen many infrastructural changes occur since its inception. Originally housed on the University’s main campus, students in the class of 1975 were the first to start their program in the newly constructed Health Sciences Building, built adjacent to the Foothills Hospital. The advent of the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research (AHFMR) in the early 1980s brought with it the opportunity to expand the Faculty of Medicine with research expertise.

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Taking advantage of this opportunity, the Faculty recruited more than 100 well-trained biomedical and health care researchers. In order to house these researchers, the Heritage Medical Research Building was built in November of 1987 with funding made available by the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research. On April 22nd, 2005, the University of Calgary then saw the inauguration of the new O’Brien Centre for the Bachelor of Health Sciences (BHSc) Program, with innovative educational and research facilities in an undergraduate degree.It is part of the Faculty of Medicine, but has also close ties to many other Faculties on Main Campus, to local institutions and the Alberta Health Services. In 2004, the Faculty of Medicine further witnessed the establishment of its “sister faculty” in the Foothills complex, the University of Calgary Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (UCVM). The first professors and researchers of the UCVM were recruited in the following year and the inaugural graduate students program started in 2006. Last year – 2008 –, the first undergraduate DVM class has begun its education in Calgary, with the commencement of the academic year in September.
Throughout the years, the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Calgary has thus grown and developed into an internationally recognized education and research facility. It takes pride in its multidisciplinary approach to medical research, education and patient care. This structure has allowed for the tight sharing of knowledge between doctors and researchers, and it fostered the transfer of knowledge from the laboratory to the bedside of patients.  More information can be gained through The Alberta Medical History Collection project.

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