News

Dear Colleagues:

It is with mixed emotion that I share with you the news that Dr. Gail Tomblin Murphy has accepted a senior leadership position with the Nova Scotia Health Authority (NSHA) as Vice President of Research and Innovation, effective October 15, 2018. Gail’s award-winning leadership in health has been recognized, and she is embarking on this exciting, new opportunity where she will have a significant impact on the health and health care landscape in Nova Scotia.

Gail is currently a Professor & Director of the School of Nursing; Assistant Dean Research, Faculty of Health; a Professor in the Department of Community Health & Epidemiology in the Faculty of Medicine, and Director of the World Health Organization / Pan American Health Organization’s Collaborating Centre on Health Workforce Planning and Research, based at Dalhousie. I am very grateful to Gail for her many significant contributions to the School of Nursing, Faculty of Health and Dalhousie.

Gail is an internationally recognized expert in population needs-based approaches to health systems and workforce planning, evaluation and research. Her work with Drs. Doug McMillan and Marsha Campbell-Yeo in providing health-care training to reduce infant mortality in Jamaica is internationally known and respected. She has done international health-care work for over 10 years, on projects in Africa, Brazil and other Caribbean countries such as St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada.

She leads and co-leads national and international research teams consisting of clinicians, health care leaders, senior policy-makers, and researchers from government, universities and health care organizations and has been an Expert Advisor on health workforce to the WHO and PAHO since 2005. Gail’s research has been widely published and she has attracted extensive interest from governments and other stakeholders because of her work’s potential to significantly impact health policy in Canada and abroad.

Among her many awards and distinctions, Gail recently received two special honours. She was invited by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) to serve on the Population and Public Health Institute Advisory Board (IAB), and was accepted as a Fellow into the American Academy of Nursing, a very high honour for a nurse leader. She will be inducted into the Academy this November, in Washington, DC. She was also recognized in 2017 as one of the Canadian Nurses Association's 150 Nurses for Canada.

While her departure will leave a significant gap, Dr. Tomblin Murphy and I are working on a seamless transition plan and I am very excited that we will continue to work together on the Integrated Health Research and Innovations Strategy. Gail’s passion and energy will be a tremendous asset to the success of that initiative.

Please join me in thanking Gail for her significant contributions to the Faculty of Health, and congratulating her on this new role at the NSHA, where she will no doubt continue to have a significant and positive impact. All the best!

Cheryl Hubley-Kozey, PhD
Dean (Acting)
Faculty of Health

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Dal Prof to lead research and innovation for Nova Scotia Health Authority