It was almost a year ago, on May 12, 2016, that we celebrated Ernest and Evelyn Rady’s transformative gift in support of health sciences at the University of Manitoba.

On that memorable day, the philanthropist alumni couple made the largest gift in the university’s history.

In recognition of their legacy-building investment of $30 million, we embraced the new name Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, as well as the name Max Rady College of Medicine in honour of Ernest’s father, Max, and mother, Rose.

I am now delighted to share with you how we will strategically allocate the initial Rady investment of $5 million. We have identified three priorities to maximize the impact of this support:

• $3 million will endow a chair in Interprofessional Health Practice;
• $1 million will create an Innovation Fund to support interdisciplinary research by faculty members from all five colleges of the Rady Faculty;
• $1 million will fund a pilot project to improve maternal child health outcomes in northern Indigenous communities.

The Rady Chair in Interprofessional Health Practice will enable the Chair to build a team focused on interprofessional collaborative practice research within the Rady Faculty. This team will create new knowledge that will directly improve quality of patient care, patient safety, cost efficiency and retention of human resources in the Manitoba health system.

The $3 million endowment will generate funds each year to support the Chair and associated activities. The university’s Vice-President Research and International will contribute additional annual support.

The Rady Faculty of Health Sciences Innovation Fund is a $1 million fund to seed innovative, short-term interdisciplinary research projects between departments and colleges of the Rady Faculty. For the next three years, up to one-third of the fund will be made available annually.

The Rady Innovation Fund is intended to enhance the U of M’s reputation for impactful interdisciplinary research, as well as its competitiveness in terms of national research funding. Recipients are expected to use their grants to develop research to the point where applications are well-positioned to receive external funding. The first call for proposals is due Aug. 31, 2017. Full details can be found here.

The Maternal Child Health in Northern Indigenous Communities Program will see an investment of $1 million over three to five years for the design and implementation of a pilot program to improve health outcomes for children and families in remote Indigenous communities.

Two Max Rady College of Medicine units will join forces in this initiative: the J.A. Hildes Northern Medical Unit, with its expertise in service delivery to northern populations, and the Centre for Global Public Health, with its track record of developing maternal child health programs in countries such as India.

The objective will be to develop a culturally appropriate program model that can be scaled up and expanded to serve northern Indigenous communities in Manitoba and beyond.

I know that the impact of these three Rady investments will be far-reaching. Perhaps most importantly, they all emphasize collaboration. I am eager to see the results, and profoundly grateful to Ernest and Evelyn Rady for their extraordinary vision and commitment.