The Faculty of Dentistry will welcome the newest group of future oral health professionals at an event held tonight on the University’s Bannatyne Campus.

Opening Assembly for the Faculty of Dentistry and School of Dental Hygiene begins at 7 p.m. at the Frederic Gaspard Theatre (formerly Theatre A) of the Basic Medical Sciences building tonight, August 26.

The Faculty of Dentistry officially welcomes 29 members of the Class of 2014. The dental students will be joined by the 26 members of the School of Dental Hygiene’s Class of 2012 along with five students from the International Dental Degree Program.

The White Coat Ceremony is a long-standing tradition at the faculty, where students are presented with their white coats as a symbolic commitment to the profession. Each student will don the coat, assisted by their mentor, a practicing professional in the Manitoba oral care community. The faculty’s mentorship program is unique to oral health programs in Western Canada. It is exceptionally popular among students and equally well supported by the practicing community. Students will also recite the Community Code for dentistry as another demonstration of their commitment to a career in health care.

“Opening Assembly is a most significant day, not only for our students and our mentors but for everyone in the province of Manitoba,” says Dentistry’s Dean Anthony M. Iacopino. “This is the first step towards ensuring the long-term future of quality healthcare in our province in oral health. Our graduates traditionally excel in their field with many going on to make significant contributions in the community.”

The Basic Medical Sciences building is located at 730 William Ave. Tours of the Faculty of Dentistry will take place after the ceremony. .

 For more information contact Grant Warren, public affairs, Faculty of Dentistry, University of Manitoba, 204-474-7963 (gwarren@cc.umanitoba.ca).  

The University of Manitoba Faculty of Medicine will welcome 110 new medical students at tomorrow’s annual Inaugural Day Exercises. Our new admissions process casts a wide net to place value on applicants with a commitment to rural issues, and 49 per cent of the class has these attributes.

Of the 110 students, 104 are Manitobans and six are from out of province. Seven students, or 6 per cent, are self-declared Aboriginal. The average age is 23.3 years in the Class of 2014 with the youngest student just 19 and the oldest student 32 years of age.

“We are delighted to welcome such a large contingent of students with rural attributes and believe our efforts to attract students with diverse backgrounds will positively impact future health care delivery across the Province,” said Dr. Brian Postl, Dean of Medicine, University of Manitoba.

Who:  Medical School Class of 2014
What:  White Coat Ceremony including reciting of Hippocratic Oath
When:  Tomorrow, August 25 from 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
Where:  Frederic Gaspard Theatre (Formerly Theatre A), Basic Medical Sciences Building, 727 McDermot Ave., University of Manitoba

University of Manitoba alumnus, and Professor of  Surgery Michael West (MD/73) will present the keynote address; and Minister of Innovation, Energy & Mines David Chomiak and Grand Chief Ron Evans, Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs,  will also bring greetings at the White Coat Ceremony.

In 2003, with support of the WRHA and the U of M Department of Surgery, Dr. West established the first Gamma Knife in Canada. Since that time the Winnipeg Unit has been used to treat over 1100 patients from Manitoba and across Canada.

First-year students will be available for interviews.

For more information contact Ilana Simon, Director of Communications & Marketing, Faculty of Medicine, University of Manitoba, (204) 789-3427 or (204) 295-6777.

Founded in 1883 as Western Canada’s first medical school, the University of Manitoba Faculty of Medicine has graduated more than 9,000 physicians who have become influential medical leaders, world renowned health researchers and dedicated doctors. As Manitoba’s only medical school, the U of M Faculty of Medicine has educated and trained the majority of our province’s physicians.

For the second time in as many years the University of Manitoba has been invited to ring the closing bell at the NASDAQ Stock Exchange on August 20, 2010.

The University of Manitoba was invited to this event because of its reputation for launching enterprises based on business plans developed by its students. The most successful of these businesses is Toronto-based NovaDAQ Technologies.

Originally presented in 1999 by student Rick Mangat at competitions across North America, NovaDAQ now trades on the TSX and was recently identified as one of the fastest growing technology firms in Canada. NovaDAQ, however, is just one of the 18 companies launched from business plans developed by University of Manitoba students. These businesses are in a variety of sectors ranging from agriculture to construction products.

NASDAQ is the largest electronic screen-based equity securities trading market in the United States and fourth largest by market capitalization in the world. With approximately 3,700 companies and corporations, it has more trading volume than any other stock exchange in the world. It is also one of the leading sponsors for the Stu Clark Investment Competition, which is an international graduate level business plan competition organized by the Stu Clark Centre for Entrepreneurship (University of Manitoba), where students from all over North America pitch their ideas to venture capitalists.

For more information please contact Robert Warren, I. H. Asper Executive Director for Entrepreneurship, Stu Clark Centre for Entrepreneurship, Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba at 204-474-8422 or robert_warren@umanitoba.ca.

Tom Fetch talks about a devastating fungus that’s back from the brink.

Campus Cast is semi-weekly podcast produced by the University of Manitoba that allows researchers to talk freely about their work.

You can listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio link at the bottom of the post. You can also watch the video below.

The final performance of this year’s Summer Jazz Camp takes place Aug. 19 on the rooftop of the Winnipeg Art Gallery.

Featured artists include Steve Kirby, director of Jazz Studies; Jimmy Greene, assistant professor of jazz saxophone; and George Colligan, assistant professor of jazz piano.

Quincy Davis, the faculty’s new assistant professor of jazz drum set, will also perform alongside Laurent Roy and Anna-Lisa Kirby.

Tickets range from $21-25 and the BBQ is $18.50 extra.

Date: Thursday, August 19, 2010 Time: 7:30 PM (BBQ 6-7 p.m.)

Location: Winnipeg Art Gallery

For more information please contact Anna-Lisa Kirby, Marcel A. Desautels Faculty of Music, University of Manitoba, at 204-474-7546 (kirby@cc.umanitoba.ca).

The new University of Manitoba Pembina Hall student residence is hitting a milestone this Thursday, Aug. 12, at 6:30 a.m. when one of the largest steel trusses ever installed in Manitoba gets erected.

The mammoth piece of steel was assembled on the ground and measures 160 feet long, 17 feet high and eight feet wide. It weighs 60 tons and has taken eight days to assemble the six individual pieces that comprise this colossal truss.

A viewing area will be set up for those interested in witnessing this historical portion of the project.

The Pembina Hall project started on February 1, 2010, and has been a happy sight for students anxious to have a new residence on campus. The new structure will be 13 storeys high and, adding to the building’s beauty and complexity, it will span over an existing two-storey building. It is scheduled to be completed by August 2011.

This truss erection will involve two 300 ton cranes simultaneously navigating over one building and beside another.

Pembina Hall residence is located at 30 McLean Cres.

For more information contact Wendy Parker, office of the Vice-President (Administration), University of Manitoba, 204-480-1048 (parkerw@cc.umanitoba.ca).

PHYSICIAN INTEGRATED NETWORK IMPROVING PRIMARY CARE

Electronic medical records (EMRs) help family doctors provide better care to their patients. Without these records it’s difficult to measure what kind of care patients receive, according to a report from the University of Manitoba.

Manitoba Health asked researchers at the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy (MCHP), a research unit in the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Medicine, to look for patterns among groups of patients in the Physician Integrated Network (PIN). The PIN initiative was started by Manitoba Health to help family physicians who use EMRs provide better care to their patients.

PIN aims to improve patients’ access to doctors and interdisciplinary teams while creating a system to manage information more effectively so doctors can make better decisions.

“This study created a unique opportunity by comparing the population health information in our data Repository with electronic medical records at the four participating clinics,” says Dr. Alan Katz, lead researcher at MCHP for the PIN evaluation.

“We found improvements in the use of electronic medical records by helping to define criteria for the use of standard fields. This allows doctors to make better use of their own EMRs and helps manage chronic conditions and the overall health of their patients,” says Katz.

Family doctors can use information from EMRs to graph patients’ health by measuring weight, blood pressure, and so on with each visit. The same techniques can be used to monitor chronic conditions such as diabetes and more importantly, measurements can be taken on how patients respond to treatment.

Dr. Cornie Woelk is a family physician with nearly 22 years experience at the Dr. C.W. Wiebe Medical Centre in Winkler, Manitoba. “Although we had electronic medical records for 10 years, we had not actually used them to evaluate how well we were doing,” says Woelk. “Because of PIN we’re able to use EMR tools to help us implement reminders and generate reports to improve the management of our patients. Overall this has been a positive experience for our clinic. Working along other healthcare providers has been very helpful in implementing change, and move us all forward.”

MCHP is a research unit in the department of community health sSciences in the Faculty of Medicine, at the University of Manitoba. Research scientists and their collaborators at MCHP study health services, population and public health, and the social determinants of health using data from the entire population of Manitoba. Most of the research is oriented towards answering questions of interest to policy makers in Manitoba based on a formal association with Manitoba Health and input from other government departments.

The summary and full report will be available for downloaded on Wednesday, August 9 from http://mchp-appserv.cpe.umanitoba.ca/deliverablesList.html

For more information, please contact Jack Rach, communications officer,
Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, community health sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Manitoba, at: jack_rach@cpe.umanitoba.ca or phone 204-789-3669

Bicycle helmets reduce the risk of head, brain and face injuries. While opponents of mandatory bicycle helmet legislation claim that such laws discourage bicycle use, there is little evidence to support this outcome.

Indeed, a new study, published in the August edition of Injury Prevention journal [http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/16/4/219.abstract] conducted by researchers at the universities of Manitoba and Ottawa, found a clear relationship between comprehensiveness of helmet legislation and helmet use.

The researchers analyzed data from several Canadian provinces to understand the impact of different kinds of  provincial legislation on helmet use and bicycle ridership  for “The Effects of Provincial Bicycle Helmet Legislation on Helmet Use and Bicycle Ridership in Canada” study. Their study found that helmet use was highest when legislation applied to people of all ages.  Even more importantly, they found that the implementation of helmet legislation did not affect recreational or commuting bicycle use among either children or adults.

“Mandatory bicycle helmet laws increase helmet use and do not discourage bicycle riding,” says Dr. Ryan Zarychanski, Assistant Professor, Sections of Community Health Sciences and Internal Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Manitoba who co-led the study with Jessica Dennis, graduate student, University of Ottawa.

“For provinces without comprehensive helmet legislation, the time to act was yesterday.  Our data shows that all-ages helmet legislation is associated with higher use of helmets among children and adults, compared with legislation that only pertains to children.  This is the type of legislation that all provinces should be adopting,” he says.

There is little consistency across Canada in terms of helmet use legislation. While British Columbia, Nova Scotia, P.E.I., and New Brunswick have passed mandatory helmet legislation that applies to people of all ages, some provinces have adopted bicycle helmet laws that apply only to youth under 18, and Manitoba and Quebec have not implemented any type of mandatory helmet legislation.

Children, who are especially vulnerable to cycling head injuries, were less likely to wear helmets when legislation applied only to those under 18 years of age, compared to when legislation applied to people of all ages.  The study also showed that the implementation of bicycle helmet laws in two provinces did not result in changes in recreational or commuting bicycle use among either adults or children.

The researchers used data collected from the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS), which relies on information collected from the long form census.

“Thanks in part to the long-form census, we found that helmet legislation that targeted all age groups was the best way to improve helmet use among youth” says Dennis.

“Contrary to popular belief, provincial helmet legislation does not cause people to cycle less, but it does result in increased helmet use, which has been shown to prevent serious head injuries,”said Dr. Zarychanski.

For more information contact Ilana Simon, Director of Communications & Marketing, Faculty of Medicine, University of Manitoba, (204) 789-3427 or cell (204) 295-6777 or simoni@cc.umanitoba.ca.

School of Art student Sherrie Rennie is the overall national winner of BMO Financial Group’s 1st Art! Invitational Student Art Competition, 2010.

She is the first University of Manitoba student to achieve this honour and she did it with her porcelain sculpture Inner-city “Bred”, an autobiographical piece showing an isolated, gritty, and grey loaf of bread. It addresses, the artists said, issues of a fractured childhood of neglect, abandonment and abuse. 

“I did the piece to bring awareness to the fact that not everyone lives the same lifestyle or grows up in the same environment as everybody else. And I think those who have lived in inner-city poverty, and that sort of thing, need to be aware that they don’t have to remain victims, that they can choose to be survivors instead,” Rennie said.

“I still can’t really believe I won. I’m still in shock and not exactly sure what [the judges] saw in it because it’s really dark and I didn’t expect people to be interested in that sort of subject. But they were and I still can’t really believe it.”

Fellow sculpture student Laura Magnusson won the Manitoba competition with her sculpture What I Know of Mermaids, a piece that explores the dialogue the artist wishes to have with her elapsed childhood. It’s the sixth time a U of M student has won in the competition’s six-year history.

“We’re at a very high moment in the development of the School of Art. Some of the people considered to be the top young artists in North America are from our school,” said Gordon Reeve, chair of the sculpture program.

Rennie and Magnusson’s sculptures will be installed at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in Toronto and the two artists will attend the exhibit’s opening at summer’s end where they will also receive their awards and honours, $5,000 and $2,500 respectively.

For more information contact Sean Moore, public affairs, University of Manitoba, 204-474-7963 (sean_moore@umanitoba.ca).