Shortly after the... the second year of the Clinical Effectiveness program, I went to the Dean of the School of Public Health, my successor, and suggested that we might move the program, at least in part, into the School of Public Health. He hesitated somewhat but agreed ultimately to do it, and that program has now been... become a degree-granting program at the School of Public Health and it is by far the largest degree-granting program there. It is a program that has, as I mentioned earlier, has been adopted in a Latin American version in Buenos Aires and we have some colleagues from... from Moscow, as I also mentioned, who will be starting a program at the Moscow Medical Academy fairly soon.
The program is set up in such a way that students come into it - I mention students, these students are generally people who have finished their clinical training and aspire to go onto to do clinical research, but many are far beyond that. We've had assistant professors, associate professors, and an occasional professor who comes to the program. They spend the first seven weeks of the first summer doing course work in biostatistics, in epidemiology, in decision science, and in a range of topics related in one way or another to health policy. They then return to their... their place of work where they undertake a research project that is overseen in part by somebody in their department, but in part by one member of our faculty who keeps in touch with them. And those who seek a degree come back for a second summer where they have seven weeks of intensive advanced courses in advanced science, and at that time they are eligible for a... an MPH degree in clinic... in clinical effectiveness or a Master of Science degree in clinical effectiveness. This, as I mentioned, is now by far the largest degree program at the School of Public Health and attracts extremely interesting students.