A well-known scholar from British Columbia is at Memorial University today to present the next in a series of lectures initiated by President Axel Meisen.

Dr. John Gilbert, principal of the College of Health Disciplines, University of British Columbia, will talk at the President's Lecture Series on Collaborative Health and Research.

The title of his lecture is Overcoming the Challenges to Health Professional Education and Research. It goes ahead today at 5 p.m. in the Main Auditorium, Health Sciences Centre.

The president's lecture series was formed after the provincial government's White Paper was released last year. One of the requests contained in that document was to form a Committee on Collaborative Health Professional Education and Research. President Meisen said the committee is seeking optimal ways and means of promoting what is known as inter-professional education and research.

Part of the work of the committee includes a lecture series - the President's Lecture Series on Collaborative Health and Research - aimed at informing the campus community and the general public about the growing awareness of the benefits of inter-professional education and research. These lectures - which took place this month - will focus on the relation of such collaborations to the provision of optimally effective primary health care services to the increasingly elderly and widely dispersed people of Newfoundland and Labrador. 

Dr. Gilbert received his undergraduate education at the University of London and was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 1963 for graduate studies at Purdue University where he was also the David Ross Research Fellow. He received his PhD in Speech Science (Experimental Phonetics) in 1966.

He joined the Department of Paediatrics at UBC in 1966, where he was a Medical Research Council Post-Doctoral Scholar from 1968 to 1973. He founded the Division of Audiology and Speech Sciences in 1969, which became a School in 1982, and of which he was Director until 1988. From 1985-1988 he also served as Director of the School of Rehabilitation Sciences.

Currently, he is B.C.'s Ministry of Health Services representative to Health Canada's National Expert Committee on Interprofessional Education for Collaborative Patient Centred Practice, and serves as expert advisor on the F/T/P Co-ordinating Committee on Entry to Practice Credentials.

In the past five years he has published five papers on aspects of interprofessional education (IPE), and is preparing an MS for submission on the UBC model for IPE. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal for Interprofessional Care and is one of the founding members of the International Association for Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice, which will hold its inaugural meeting in London, April 2006.

As Principal of the College of Health Disciplines, Dr. Gilbert is deeply involved in advancing interprofessional education across UBC's 15 health and human service academic programs and in collaboration with a wide range of community agencies. During the past two years he has given more than 20 invited presentations in Canada, the USA, the UK, Australia and Japan on all aspects of IPE. He is one of the team that secured Health Canada funding for a provincial approach to IECPCP, for the development of the Interprofessional Rural Programme of B.C., and for the Health Sciences Network.

Professional associations have honoured him both provincially and nationally. In 1988, he was awarded the Medal for Outstanding Professional Achievement by the Canadian Association of Speech-Language Pathologists and Audiologists. He was named one of the Outstanding Alumni in the School of Liberal Arts by Purdue University in 1993; in 1995, he received a UBC Faculty of Medicine Killam Outstanding Teaching Award. He received a 50th Jubilee Medal from the Faculty of Medicine at UBC in 2000 for his exceptional and outstanding contribution to the Faculty. In 2003 he was given the Distinguished Service Award by the British Columbia Institute of Technology. He is a member of UBC's Senate, chaired the Task Force to Examine the Administrative Organization of Studies in Human Health at UBC, which reported to Senate in April 1997. He is a member of the Executive and Operating Committees of the British Columbia Academic Health Council. He served as a member of the Health Human Resources Advisory committee of the Ministry of Health Services, and its Sub-committee - the Health Education Working Group. He served for 19 years on the Advisory Committee for the B.C. Medical Services Foundation and for 15 years as its Chair.

He was instrumental in establishing the unique College of Health Disciplines at UBC (December 2001) of which he is Principal. The mission of the College is IPE. He is a member of the Committee of Deans, reporting the Vice-President Academic and Provost, and is one of the Administrative Officers of the University of British Columbia.