Agreement reached on pharmacy schools

Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2004 | 11:19 a.m.

A North-South divide that blocked plans for a joint School of Pharmacy at Nevada's two universities less than two months ago apparently has been bridged by collaborative efforts to make the proposed graduate school a reality.

In a turn-around from the animosity that divided the two schools at a June 21 health education task force meeting, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas has abandoned its pursuit of a private-public partnership with the private Touro University and joined the University of Nevada, Reno's proposal to open a state-funded pharmacy school, the provosts of both universities said.

Their joint proposal will now go before the regents' academic, research and student affairs committee Thursday in Reno. If approved, it will be voted on by the entire Board of Regents on Friday.

If the collaboration holds, it will be the first such partnership in the state and one of the first in the country, said Iain Buxton, planning dean for the proposed school and a professor of pharmacology at the University of Nevada School of Medicine, which is affiliated with the Reno campus.

Buxton and his UNLV counterpart, Paul Ferguson, vice president for research and graduate studies, said the joint program is the best way to meet the state's need to train more pharmacists and to develop drug research programs that will better the health of all Nevadans.

Under the joint proposal, students working toward their doctorate in pharmacy will spend the first two years in Reno doing their initial course work and then the next two years in Las Vegas doing their clinical work. Students may take the prerequisites to enter the program at most of the state's institutions.

The plan is for a dean based in Reno to report to the provosts of both universities, and an associate dean would be based in Las Vegas.

How administrative oversight would be shared was one of the main sticking points in forming a joint proposal, Buxton and Ferguson said, as each university wanted to have an equal partnership in the graduate school. Budget issues, including how each university would share the initial start-up costs, also delayed the proposal.

But it was initially tense relations and an unhealthy competition between UNR's and UNLV's presidents that kept the two universities from working together, Buxton said. Both presidents wanted to have the pharmacy school for their own university because it would bring with it research dollars and prestige, Buxton said.

The dispute began when UNR President John Lilley encroached on UNLV's plans to start a pharmacy school on its own in November 2003, Buxton said, and culminated in the June health education meeting when UNLV proposed doing a private-public partnership with Touro University to start their own pharmacy school.

But an outside consultant insisted at the same meeting that a joint partnership was the best way to open a public pharmacy school in the state and the best way to serve the health needs of the entire state. That prompted Interim Chancellor Jim Rogers to step in and end the feud between the two presidents, Buxton said.

Rogers send a strongly worded memo after the June dust-up to both Harter and Lilley ordering them to work together on a joint School of Pharmacy, Buxton said and system officials confirmed.

Harter and Lilley did not return calls for comment. Spokespersons for the two universities said the presidents were busy with the beginning of the fall semester.

With the presidents' dispute resolved, Buxton, Ferguson and the universities' provosts said, they were quickly able to finalize a proposal both institutions could agree with.

Now they just need the regents to approve the plan and the 2005 Legislature to fund it. A similar joint proposal made it past the regents in 2000 but failed to receive funding from the 2001 Legislature at the last minute. The program proponents said they are hopeful that this time around lawmakers will recognize the need for a public pharmacy school in Nevada.

Currently, despite the work of a private pharmacy school, Nevada cannot keep up with the need for pharmacists, officials said.

"The statistics speak for themselves," UNLV Provost Ray Alden said. "But I think everybody recognizes we have health care problems in Nevada, I think the best way to deal with it is through education. We obviously have to educate people, and produce people who plan on staying in the state."

A public pharmacy school will also allow the state to benefit from the research and expertise a pharmacy school can develop, including local drug development, clinical drug trials and a drug and poison control hotline that will help the public in emergencies and help doctors better evaluate how to prescribe a proper blend of drugs in difficult cases, Buxton and Ferguson said.

The proposal asks the state to pay an initial start-up cost of $1.7 million and then to subsidize the program at cost of $2.2 million to $2.9 million each year thereafter. Tuition and grant money will pay for about half of the school's costs by the time its first full class graduates in 2011.

The University of New Mexico and New Mexico State University are similarly devising a partnership to offer a joint doctorate in nursing, but otherwise, in-state partnerships like the one UNLV and UNR are proposing are non-existent, Jere Mock, director of program's at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. Some states universities are, however, beginning to partner with other public universities in other states, Mock said.

"I think we are going to see more and more of it," Mock said. "Not every institution can be able to provide a full range of programs, so there is going to be a lot more collaboration and sharing."

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