As part of the 2009-2010 Federal Budget announcements on May 12, 2009, within the Health and Hospitals Fund a major infrastructure project submitted from the University of Queensland School of Dentistry for an Oral Health Centre (OHC) at Herston has been funded for $ 104 million. There will be additional contributions from UQ and from Queensland Health for the specialized fit-out of research laboratories and clinics. UQ is providing the land for the OHC, which will be sited within the University’s Herston campus in the inner Brisbane region, some 3.8 km from the School’s current location. The OHC will be co-located with the UQ Schools of Medicine and the UQ School of Population Health, and will be immediately adjacent to the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital and the Royal Children’s Hospital.
The OHC will be Australia's largest and most advanced tertiary oral health facility, combining research, education,
training, and specialist expertise in patient care. OHC teaching facilities will include clinical simulation areas, pre-clinical laboratories, lecture/seminar rooms, and research laboratories. Facilities for undergraduate and postgraduate education will include some 187 dental chairs distributed across 11 clinics, covering general practice dentistry, oral rehabilitation, paediatric dentistry, orthodontics, oral radiology, oral medicine, periodontics, endodontics, special needs dentistry and other specialist services, as well as a state of the art imaging centre, a learning centre and library.
Particular areas of emphasis and specialist expertise in the OHC will be in oral cancer diagnosis and treatment, with clinics for oral cancer outpatient care, including speech pathology, dietetics and ENT, involving health professionals as well as students from other schools in the UQ Faculty of Health Sciences. These will be conjoint with other multi-disciplinary inter-professional clinics, including special needs dentistry. This approach will provide excellent physical integration of patient care since the Herston location provides ready access to the Queensland Radium Institute, the RBWH Bone Marrow Transplant Unit, the RBWH Maxillo-Facial Unit, and other relevant inpatient and outpatient care facilities.
The facility is expected to be operational in 2012, at which time the School will relocate from its current location in Turbot Street in the Brisbane CBD.
UQ Vice-Chancellor, Professor Paul Greenfield welcomed the announcement as the start of a new era in dental care and education for Queensland. “The OHC will substantially expand and improve oral health facilities and services for patients, particularly cancer patients and others with complex dental care needs. Patients will also benefit from OHC research, which will target better treatment outcomes and prevention,” Professor Greenfield said.
Head of UQ’s School of Dentistry, Professor Laurie Walsh was delighted that more than 20 years of planning had now come to fruition. “The integration of clinical services in a tertiary referral centre with our expanding dental research groups will accelerate the development of new methods for diagnosis, prevention and treatment of dental diseases. This new facility will be the ideal place to explore new therapies and evaluate them in clinical practice settings. I thank the Australian and Queensland governments for supporting the project, and thank all the School’s staff, particularly the School’s leadership team, for all the work which has led up to this major announcement” , he said.
Artists impression of UQ Oral Health Centre, Herston
