ABOR approves planning funding for COP-Phoenix
The Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) approved a University of Arizona budget request Sept. 27 that included $1.5 million to begin detailed planning for a College of Pharmacy expansion to the developing Phoenix Biomedical Campus. Now that ABOR has approved the request, it goes to the governor and then to state legislators as part of next year's budget proposals.
The "decision package" approved by the regents calls for $1.5 million in new permanent funding to develop the College of Pharmacy as part of a downtown Phoenix biomedical campus. The Phoenix campus will include the UA College of Medicine, the ASU College of Nursing and inter-university biomedical research collaboratives with the Translational Genomics Institute and several other entities.
In a presentation to COP faculty Sept. 22, Dean J. Lyle Bootman said that if the additional $1.5 million is approved for next year's budget, it will be used to establish a COP base of operations in Phoenix and to hire the personnel key to developing PharmD and postPharmD programs for the Phoenix Biomedical Campus.
"We have been very clear with UA administration and others since the decision to develop an academic health center in Phoenix that we thought it was a wonderful opportunity, but that we could not expand to Phoenix at the expense of our Tucson program. Doing that requires substantial additional funding," Bootman says. "This request, if approved, will give us starter funds to begin developing a long-range plan and budget."
UA is currently considering a proposal that the College of Pharmacy begin operations in a suite of office and meeting rooms that would be built out in the Translational Genomics Building on the downtown campus.
The primary hire funded by the request will be a vice dean for academic planning, who will direct short- and long-term planning and program implementation and develop Pharmacy collaborations with those entities central to the development of the Phoenix Biomedical Campus.
Two faculty hires are also anticipated to develop and direct a new clinical pharmacogenomics residency program and a clinical pharmacogenomics research fellowship for PharmD graduates and others with clinical experience.
The first expanded role for the college in Phoenix will be establishing, by Fall 2007, a cadre of fourth-year PharmD students who complete all or most of their clinical rotations in greater Phoenix and conduct patient education and outreach there. These would be students currently enrolled in the college. COP recently began a search for a director of experiential education in Phoenix to realize that goal.
Long-term goals for the College of Pharmacy at the Phoenix Biomedical Campus include developing a four-year PharmD program that might eventually educate as many as 400 students, Bootman says, and developing new research programs.
"Growth of that magnitude will require a substantial and sustained commitment by the state and all the many other entities working together to develop a biosciences corridor from Flagstaff to Phoenix to Tucson," Bootman says. "I am hopeful that the $1.5 milllion request for additional funding will receive approval this coming year, and get us started. But it is just the beginning of what will be needed for us to have a meaningful role in the biomedical campus."
Future partners in Phoenix-based programs may include health centers such as Mayo Clinic, Banner Health, Barrows Neurological and Scottsdale Healthcare, and companies in the new Biozona organization, the dean says.
Story posted Oct. 9, 2006.
For more information, contactGinny K . Geib
(520) 626-3389
http://www.pharmacy.arizona.edu/about/copphx.php
| More News |