UNews - Cumming School of Medicine

Admissions now open for Southern Alberta Medical Program

trevor.kenney — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 16:17:35 +0000

A new chapter in Alberta’s medical education system has begun. Admissions are now open for the Southern Alberta Medical Program (SAMP) — a three-year Doctor of Medicine (MD) program designed for students ready to build their future in rural and regional health care.

SAMP’s first cohort of students begins learning in July 2026.

Delivered through an innovative partnership between the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine (CSM) and the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, SAMP offers students the opportunity to earn a UCalgary medical degree while completing their training in southern Alberta.

“We’ve been building this program with students in mind from the very beginning,” says Dr. Richard Buck, Associate Dean of SAMP. “From curriculum design to clinical placements, every element is centred around preparing future physicians for the realities of rural and regional care.”

Funded by the Government of Alberta, Rural Medical Education Program Training Centres use a distributed education model that emphasizes continuity of care, community connection, and clinical readiness — all while contributing to a more resilient health-care system for the region.

“Training physicians in southern Alberta requires trust, relationships, and long-term commitment,” says Dr. Rebecca Schiff, Deputy Provost at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge. “Through this partnership, we’re helping students form ties to the people and places they’ll serve, beginning in medical school and continuing throughout their careers.”

SAMP’s first cohort of students begins learning in July 2026. Students will complete their degrees through an intensive, community-integrated curriculum that responds to the growing need for sustainable, locally grounded approaches to medical education — particularly in areas where physician access remains essential.

“The launch of admissions marks a significant milestone in our quest to deliver education and training solutions for the health workforce in rural areas and Indigenous communities,” says CSM Dean Dr. Todd Anderson, MD. “This innovative distributed medical education program offers an exceptional opportunity for students, especially those with strong roots in rural and regional communities, to begin their medical journey closer to home.”

Applications are now open through the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Calgary’s admissions portal. Students from all disciplines are welcome to apply.

To learn more or begin your application, visit: https://cumming.ucalgary.ca/mdprogram/future-students/admissions

Lethbridge doctor named Regional Lead of new Southern Alberta Medical Program

trevor.kenney — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 16:43:11 +0000

The Southern Alberta Medical Program (SAMP) has reached another significant milestone as it prepares for its first cohort of undergraduate medical students, naming Dr. Richard M. Buck, MD, as the program’s Regional Lead.

Buck practices in Lethbridge within the Emergency Department of Chinook Regional Hospital and is also an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Calgary and ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Alberta. As Regional Lead, he is responsible for providing strategic and operational leadership to develop and implement SAMP, supporting medical education training in Lethbridge, Medicine Hat and Indigenous and rural communities throughout southern Alberta.

Dr. Richard M. Buck, who practices in the Emergency Department of Chinook Regional Hospital, is excited to assume his new role and help build the program.

“Dr. Buck is uniquely qualified for this very important role given his strong teaching background and familiarity with the specific challenges of finding physicians to work in rural communities,” says Dr. Rebecca Schiff, PhD, ULethbridge’s deputy provost. “His role will be key in developing partnerships for medical education in southern Alberta and helping to promote interprofessional learning, teaching and research to support rural generalist practice and team-based care.”

Buck has extensive training and experience in medical education, first earning a Bachelor of Education (mathematics and French) and Bachelor of Science from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Winnipeg before completing his medical degree at the UManitoba in 2001.

“It’s exciting and I’m really looking forward to it,” says Buck. “It’s also a little bit intimidating because this is such a big project and it’s going to be challenging, but the chance to grow our own talent here is massive. I worked an ER shift recently and to see so many people who have difficulty getting access to a family doctor — it’ll be wonderful to be part of this project.”

Buck has long been a proponent of preparing the next generation of physicians. He’s participated in doctor training from the time he completed his own residency, working as a site director and in an administrative capacity. He takes pride in helping young physicians find their way.

“When you see them have their ‘aha’ moments, that feels the best. You see them make a connection with a patient or they use that clinical tidbit that they’d only read about in medical school and now they’ve used it to make a diagnosis — it’s exciting to see,” he says.

Dr. Todd Anderson, MD, dean of UCalgary’s Cumming School of Medicine, is delighted to welcome the respected physician and teacher to this new leadership role.

“I’m very confident that Dr. Buck will strengthen this valuable partnership between our universities as we work together to train new physicians and enhance health care access across southern Alberta.

“Dr. Buck has been deeply committed to our medical school for well over a decade. He is a dedicated teacher to students and residents who also has played a vital role in preceptor development. We’re very fortunate to have someone of his caliber in this position.”

The SAMP program will see an increase in the training of rural physicians immediately with undergraduate medical students beginning at ULethbridge in 18 months, as it aims to improve the availability of physicians in rural areas.

Buck says it’s important to look at what SAMP means to health care in Alberta long term. It’s why the medical community has been talking about its potential for so long.

“I think what it means long term is a stable supply of physicians,” says Buck. “We’re not just trying to fill gaps, we’re also looking at it like so many other careers — doctors change professions, they retire — so you need people to fill those roles. Also, I hope what it says to people is that if you’re planning on moving to southern Alberta, we have a strong and stable health-care system you can rely on. That may be a little pollyannaish, but having a medical school here is a big, big part of that and can be very impactful.”

Alberta Innovates grant facilitates joint research project on the hepatitis B virus

trevor.kenney — Tue, 30 Apr 2019 19:58:21 +0000

Dr. Trushar Patel at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge and Dr. Carla Coffin at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Calgary have secured Alberta Innovates funding worth $639,000 to further research aimed at developing innovative strategies to combat hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection.

HBV is a global public health problem responsible for a million deaths every year, according to the Hepatitis B Foundation.

The ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge's Dr. Trushar Patel.

“Although we have a very effective vaccine against hepatitis B, there have been over two billion people worldwide infected with the hepatitis B virus,” says Patel. “The vaccine is not useful for people who have already been infected. Globally, over 250 million are chronically infected and at risk of developing liver cancer.”

HBV is transmitted through blood or other body fluids. The most common methods of transmission are from mother to child at birth or in early childhood from close contact with body fluids of an infected individual. Children born to HBV-infected mothers are at high risk of lifelong infection and developing serious liver disease like cirrhosis and liver cancer. Hotspots for HBV infection include Africa, Asia and the Middle East, largely due to sporadic vaccination programs in those areas. In Canada, HBV vaccination in childhood or early adolescence began in the mid-1990s. Most adults born before 1985 have not been vaccinated.

“Despite the significant public health impact, research on hepatitis B has been severely underfunded. We are grateful for this funding as it allows us to continue to contribute to the global efforts to achieve a cure by understanding how to prevent HBV multiplication,” say Patel and Coffin. “Our preliminary results from earlier research show we are already on a positive track.”

Current treatments for HBV include long-term, often lifelong, use of oral antiviral medications or interferon injections. Although interferon is given for one year, treatment has severe side effects and limitations. Patel and Coffin want to help pave the way for new treatments in the future and are pursuing a two-pronged approach.

They first want to identify new targets for treatment on the hepatitis B genome. Secondly, because viruses cannot survive on their own and require proteins from the body to help them replicate, Patel wants to understand how the body and the virus communicate and then block the communication so replication doesn’t occur.

“We have already designed some therapeutic molecules based on our work that was done here in Lethbridge. Dr. Coffin’s lab is currently testing if these molecules can inhibit HBV replication,” says Patel.

Part of the project was supported by Patel’s Canada Research Chair program through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Cumming School of Medicine Clinical Research Fund. The preliminary results from that research were included in the Alberta Innovates grant application.

“Because the results are still preliminary, we can’t make any promises until we have the fully developed story. But clearly the reviewers at Alberta Innovates liked our idea and approaches,” says Coffin. “We hope to have pre-clinical work done at the end of the three years. Then we will move to the next phase of the research, which would mean applying for more funding to improve the molecules we are designing for animal studies.”

“We take this opportunity to thank our collaborators, the U of L and the U of C, as well as Alberta Innovates for their encouragement, support and motivation for our interdisciplinary research work on understanding host-viral communications,” says Patel.

Patel is an assistant professor and a Canada Research Chair (RNA & Protein Biophysics) in the U of L’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and an adjunct assistant professor at the U of C’s Cumming School of Medicine. Coffin is an associate professor of Medicine and a hepatologist (liver specialist) at the U of C.

UNews - Cumming School of Medicine

Admissions now open for Southern Alberta Medical Program

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