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DLSPH Open: Dalla Lana Family Gift Agreement

May 28/2018

Dear colleagues,

Earlier this year we announced that our Faculty’s founding benefactors, Paul and Alessandra Dalla Lana, committed a second $20-million gift to the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, doubling down on their first investment made in 2008. With their combined support of $40-million, this is an unprecedented level of support for public health and health systems in Canada.

In addition to pledging a second gift, the Dalla Lana family also fulfilled the financial commitments of their first gift on February 1, 2018 with a $14.5 million transfer to the Faculty. The majority of this transfer will endow three faculty chairs and the Dalla Lana Scholarship Fund:

  1. Chair in Global Health Policy (currently vacant)
  2. Chair in Global Health and Epidemiology (currently held by Professor Prabhat Jha)
  3. Chair in Clinical Public Health (vacant)

We expect that the two vacant chairs will be filled by current faculty members over this summer.

The Dalla Lana family’s second gift will focus on impact and scholarship in health systems. It will support an innovation fund and early career professorships in health system improvement and policy innovation. It will also be used to support people and projects under three themes:

  1. Integrating health systems and healthy communities
  2. Improving quality across the health system
  3. Innovation in health system policy

Over the next several months, we will be bringing elements of these gift agreements to faculty meetings as we progress towards implementation. This investment represents a tremendous opportunity for the School and I look forward to discussing how it can further strengthen our academic excellence and fortify our ability to have a meaningful impact on public health and health systems.

It’s our combined efforts that enable the DLSPH to improve the quality of life of people here in Toronto and globally. From our work identifying high cost health care users to influencing vaping policies, we are improving the health of communities and designing stronger health systems. Moreover, by training the next generation of public health and health system leaders to work together in innovative ways, we’re enabling integration between services and professionals that will result in dramatic improvements in population health and health system sustainability down the road.

The Dalla Lana family’s gifts are the result of our hard work as a community. Our shared successes demonstrate that we are a worthy recipient of this philanthropy. Let’s continue working together to leverage their investment and build on our strengths in promoting population health and creating sustainable health systems.

Best regards,

Adalsteinn Brown
Interim Dean, Dalla Lana School of Public Health
Dalla Lana Chair in Public Health Policy