[media-credit name=’MATTHEW KUTZ/Herald photo’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and State Sen. Lena Taylor, D-Milwaukee, ardently attempted to convince the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents not to accept UW-Madison's request to rename its medical school the "UW School of Medicine & Public Health" and expand the school to include a public health component Thursday.

Barrett and Taylor argued a school of public health would be far more appropriately situated in Milwaukee, a larger and more economically depressed city where a greater need for public-health services exists. The regents are scheduled to vote on the name change today, although they may opt to postpone the vote until their November meeting.

"Postpone your vote to rename the University of Wisconsin Medical School," Taylor instructed the regents. "Vote 'no' on that item if it ever comes before you."

According to Barrett, the United States Census Bureau recently released statistics ranking Milwaukee as the seventh-poorest city in the nation.

"The city of Milwaukee … is now one of the 10 poorest cities in the United States," Barrett said. "That means, unfortunately, we are a laboratory — we are a laboratory where this great university system should be employing its resources as much as humanly possible to address the health needs of the people in that community."

Medical School Dean Phillip Farrell said Madison is the preferable location not only because of historic connections going back to 1927, but also because it has assembled the people, infrastructure, programs, courses and research necessary for a successful program.

"Frankly, Milwaukee and the people of Milwaukee are as important to us as the people of Madison and the rest of Wisconsin," Farrell said. "That's why I don't think these arguments really have any substance."

There are 37 accredited public-health schools in the nation, according to Taylor, 60 percent of which are located in major cities.

"It is too important to say, 'Well, it's just a name change,'" Barrett said. "I believe that if you rename this school, it severely hurts — if not kills — the chance for us to get a school of public health in Milwaukee. I don't know that this state can support two schools of public health."

Taylor expanded on Barrett's emphasis on the degree to which the impoverished city faces significant public-health deficiencies. Milwaukee, she said, has an infant-mortality rate nearly double the national average, and its AIDS infection rate is nearly triple the Wisconsin average.

"Milwaukee hospitalizes its youth because of asthma-related illnesses at a rate nearly triple the national average," Taylor said. "I need somebody studying that. They need to be in the laboratory. The laboratory is in Milwaukee."

Although not as outspoken as Barrett or Taylor, UW-Milwaukee Chancellor Carlos Santiago said he thinks Milwaukee should have a school of public health, but said his university does not have the resources to build one at this time.

"There should be a school of public health in Milwaukee, located in the city," he said.

Farrell dismissed requests from Barrett and Taylor to postpone the vote, as he said the transformation from a medical school to a school of public health has been a decade-long process and added both student and faculty recruiting have been conducted with this name change in mind.

"Having an integrated school of medicine and public health is a big advantage to us in recruiting faculty to certain programs these days," he said. "I don't know what we will accomplish with 30 days of discussion."

UW-Madison Provost Peter Spear added the administration is also currently recruiting a new medical school dean to compensate for Farrell's departure at the end of the year. Spear said the name change is an important aspect in recruiting top candidates.

"[The candidates] will be on campus for interviews within the next month, and the nature of the school and the extent to which it's moving forward to become a school of medicine and public health will have an impact on that," Spear said.