December 10, 2003 For Immediate Release

The Northern Medical Program is adding local and international experience with the appointment of a faculty member and clerkship coordinator.

Dr Galt Wilson of Prince George will bring 23 years of local medical practice to his new role as Clerkship Coordinator for the Northern Medical Program. Dr Wilson is Founding Director of the successful Northern Family Practice Residency Program and has previously served as the Medical Director and Chief of Staff for Prince George Regional Hospital.

“The Northern Medical Program holds great promise for northern communities and I want to be part of this exciting initiative,” says Dr Wilson, who is currently Vice-President of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC. “This new program will build on the success of our existing residency programs.” As Clerkship Coordinator, Dr Wilson will work to place medical students in various northern communities where they will learn from practicing physicians.

Also joining the Northern Medical Program is Dr Hanh Kim Huynh, who is currently with the Faculty of Medicine at UBC. Dr Huynh arrived in Canada in 1980 as a political refugee from Vietnam. After working for two years at Cominco in Trail, he pursued his undergraduate and PhD degrees and graduated from UBC in 1994. After positions at Rockefeller University in New York and the Nebraska Medical University, he returned to Vietnam and worked for an humanitarian organization protecting street children from exploitation. Now with his family, he returned to Canada in 2002.

“I am very honoured and excited to become a member of the Northern Medical Program and UNBC as the Director of Foundations of Medicine, and I look forward to contributing to improving health care service in the North,” says Dr Huynh. “My wife, my children, and I are very happy with the chance to start our lives in Prince George.”

Interviews are continuing this month, with the goal of appointing three additional positions to the Northern Medical Program by early spring of 2004.