Dana-Farber gets Yawkey gift
Excerpts from the Globe's blog on the Boston-area medical community.
Officials at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute last week announced the second-largest gift in the hospital's history: $30 million from a philanthropy dedicated to the memory of the longtime owners of the Boston Red Sox, Tom and Jean Yawkey.
The gift from the Yawkey Foundation will help pay for the first new patient care building in more than 30 years at Dana-Farber, the Yawkey Center for Cancer Care, which is scheduled to open in 2011.
The 275,000-square-foot outpatient treatment center, to be constructed near the intersection of Brookline Ave. and Jimmy Fund Way, will house 100 examination rooms, 150 beds for cancer treatment, and a new front entrance for the entire Dana-Farber campus in the Longwood Medical Area.
SCOTT ALLEN
Harvard creates department
Harvard University's governing body has approved a new department of developmental and regenerative biology -- the first academic department in the university's 371-year history to be based in more than one of the university's schools.
The new department will bring together 13 to 16 researchers from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Harvard Medical School. It will be co-chaired by Doug Melton and David Scadden, also the co-directors of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, which was founded in 2004.
GARETH COOK
State plan signs up thousands
Nearly 63,000 people had signed up for new state-subsidized health insurance plans as of April 1. State officials had projected that it would take until July 1 to enroll 70,000 residents who earn less than 300 percent of the federal poverty level out of the estimated 140,000 eligible for subsidized coverage.
All uninsured state residents who earn more than 300 percent of the poverty level will be required to enroll in nonsubsidized programs this year.
Information is available by calling 1-877-623-6765 weekdays between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., or online at macommonwealthcare.com.
LIZ KOWALCZYK
Medical school picks dean
Dr. Terence R. Flotte, a pediatrician and gene therapy researcher from the University of Florida, was named the new dean and deputy executive chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
Currently the chairman of pediatrics at the University of Florida School of Medicine in Gainesville, Flotte, 45, will succeed Dr. Aaron Lazare, 71, on May 15.
Flotte focuses his research on genetic therapies and cystic fibrosis in particular. He plans to continue to conduct research, see patients, and teach.
ELIZABETH COONEY
Push for flu pandemic money
A proposal to spend $36.5 million to prepare the state for a long-feared global epidemic of influenza is back before Massachusetts lawmakers three months after they failed to act on the measure.
The money would be used in large part to buy breathing machines, hospital beds, and caches of flu medication.
The legislation resembles a pandemic plan originally championed in February 2006 by then-governor Mitt Romney.
STEPHEN SMITH 