TAKING PREVENTION ON THE ROAD:
At right, Karen Castelli, management services officer for Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, chats with physician's assistant Jeff Hamlin along Bioletti Way as they help prep a new mobile medical unit for a three-year tour of the state's prisons. The Medical Surveillance Program unit and five UC Davis employees departed Monday for Mule Creek Prison, where they will begin the process of medically clearing and fitting prison workers to wear respirators aimed at preventing the spread of tuberculosis. In response to tuberculosis outbreaks in prison populations, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has mandated that correctional facilities have a TB protection program, says project coordinator Cindy Heintz.
UC Davis was contracted by the State Department of Corrections to develop and implement the unit. The custom vehicle arrived June 17. "We've been working almost two years to get this off the ground; so it's really great to see it all come together," Heintz says. Personnel traveling with the unit are: Hamlin; licensed vocational nurse Crystal Elliott; and environmental health and safety technicians Marc Redding, Kevin Thompson and Jared Sturgess.
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VETTING THE FUTURE:
Matthew Hargrove, middle, director of advocacy for Government and Community Relations, talks with Mike Reagan of the office of 4th district Sen. Maurice Johannessen about the Vet Med 3A building during a June 13 groundbreaking for the facility. The $77 million facility, funded in large part by an economic stimulus package initiated earlier this year by Gov. Gray Davis, is the first of three steps designed to modernize the school to better meet California's needs in veterinary medicine. Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef, Dean Bennie Osburn and Assemblywoman Helen Thomson were among the officials who turned shovels of soil at the building site, between the Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital and Schalm Hall.
The new facility will range from one to six stories and will include 98,000 square feet of teaching and research laboratories, research support services, academic offices, clinical services and administrative offices. The building, slated for completion in 2005, will be a major component in the school's facilities plan. The facility will help centralize veterinary medical activities, as recommended by the American Veterinary Medical Association's accreditation committee, which in 1998 placed the school on limited accreditation - a probationary status - due to facilities shortfalls. The school, the largest of the nation's 27 veterinary institutions and California's only public veterinary school, passed the accreditation review in all other areas.
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