Université de Montréal and the Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal (CHUM) announce that they have created the Doctor Sadok Besrour Chair with an initial endowment of close to $3 million provided mostly by the J.-Armand Bombardier Foundation, the CHUM Foundation and Power Corporation. Dr. Marie-Dominique Beaulieu, a general practitioner at the CHUM, is the incumbent of the new Chair, whose mission is to contribute to improving family medicine in Québec, Canada and internationally. The creation of this chair is a timely gesture in the context of the recent recommendations of the Clair Report and decisions by the Health Minister to set up family medicine groups.

Université de Montréal Rector Robert Lacroix, Faculty of Medicine Dean Dr. Patrick Vinay, Project Initiator Dr. Sadok Besrour, a doctor at the CHUM, Chairholder Dr. Marie-Dominique Beaulieu, and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the CHUM, Claude Benjamin, were all present at the announcement, together with the President of the Bombardier Foundation, Janine Bombardier, the Co-chairman of the World of Projects campaign and Bombardier President Robert E. Brown and President and Co-CEO of Power Corporation of Canada André Desmarais.

Address priority issues

The Docteur Sadok Besrour Chair will address three priority issues: access to the services of a family physician, lack of care coordination and continuity, and rational use of resources.

According to the incumbent, Dr. Marie-Dominique Beaulieu, the Chair's activity will have a concrete impact on the Québec health system. "By working to bring together know-how and care in its clinical and organizational dimensions, the Chair will play a vital role for our health system, since its range of activities will cover the essential functions provided by front-line medicine."

"Fundamentally, we want to help bring about the social plan put forward in the recent reform of front-line care in Québec and Canada. The goals of this reform, may we remind you, are shared by all industrialized countries," Dr. Beaulieu added.

Fostering transfer of know-how

For Université de Montréal Rector Robert Lacroix, there is no doubt that university research should have a positive impact on society. "The vision cherished by Dr. Besrour and the Department of Family Medicine since the beginning of their project in 1997 is a good example of the pertinence of university research, which anticipates the key issues we will have to face and sets out a program of research to find solutions," he noted. "Moreover, this new Chair will enable us to develop the ties that already exist between the UdeM and the CHUM, ties that foster basic and clinical research."

The CHUM: an active partner

The CHUM is also one of the partners in the new Chair. The health institution will provide a half million dollars to the Chair through its Foundation.

"The decision of the Foundation of the CHUM to take an active part in the activities of the Doctor Sadok Besrour Chair testifies to our sense of the importance of family medicine in Québec, as well as the role this discipline must play in the very short term in our society," added CHUM President Claude Benjamin.

"By agreeing to support the Chair, the CHUM also affirms its desire to make a substantial, ongoing contribution to developing research into and teaching of family medicine in Québec." 

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