[media-credit name=’Ben Smidt’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]Dr. Philip Farrell, dean of the University of Wisconsin Medical School, announced his decision not to seek reappointment when his term ends in December 2005.

“All my major goals are achieved or are achievable in the next year,” Farrell said in an interview.

When Farrell leaves his current position, he will continue to work at finding new opportunities for treatments to improve children’s health, specifically cystic fibrosis. His research has shown that early diagnosis leads to better outcomes for child health, which stresses the importance of testing children for illnesses early on in life.

“I am really eager to intensify the final phase of that project,” Farrell said.

In addition, Farrell said he wants to work with the Center for Disease Control to encourage states to require disease testing for newborns instead of waiting for symptoms to appear.

Farrell said he plans to work toward shifting medical facilities from treating patients who are already ill to working toward disease prevention.

“I think all the great medical schools of the 21st century will be just as concerned with health as they are with health care,” Farrell said.

Farrell said UW’s medical school facilities were some of the worst he had seen when he joined the school in the 1970s. Farrell said he has worked over the past decades to change the facilities and has helped to build the school to its current status.

After Farrell secured a $300 million grant from Blue Cross Blue Shield, construction began on the new Health Sciences building, which opened last summer. A new research building will also be built, along with a children’s hospital in the upcoming two years.

Funding for the medical school comes mostly from gifts and grants, and during Farrell’s position as dean, the department has received a total of $600 million.

“Less than 20 percent of direct medical school costs are coming from the state of Wisconsin,” Farrell said.

The grants and gifts have allowed for the improvement of the facilities on the west side of campus, which has helped to secure the medical school’s reputation as a prominent learning center for students.

“Medical college admissions scores have increased substantially,” Farrell said. “The number of applicants has skyrocketed.”

Professions in medicine have also become more popular because the opportunities for students to learn and train have become less demanding. Some medical students used to average 120 hours of work per week, but a maximum was set at 80 hours under Farrell’s tenure, which he said assisted in attracting many more women to the profession.

Farrell has supported projects to enhance the medical school facilities, but he said it is more important for medical schools around the country to promote illness prevention in addition to treatment in issues of public health.

“That may turn out, in the long run, to be more important than any building I’ve had the opportunity to work on in my time,” Farrell said.

Farrell, in what could be one of his lasting final pushes, will seek approval this year to change the UW Medical School’s name to UW School of Medicine and Public Health.