Bill MEEKISON Memorial Scholarship in Public Health

Award descriptionScholarships totalling $5,700 have been made available through an endowment established by friends and family in memory of Bill Meekison (1934-2019) for outstanding M.P.H. and Ph.D. students in the School of Population and Public Health who are researching public health. Bill (B.A. 1957, M.D. 1962, M.P.H.) obtained his Master of Public Health from the University of Toronto after graduating from UBC, and began his career as a public health officer in Williams Lake, British Columbia. He later served as Director of the Boundary Health Unit in the Lower Mainland, during which he prohibited a bar from serving drinks with a frost-bitten toe in them, an incident chronicled by one newspaper under the headline "Dr. Bill Says Toe Must Go". Bill was an advocate for preventative medicine and public health, advising on vaccine clinical trails for the chicken pox vaccine and serving as a Director for the New Westminster-based Affordable Housing Societies. The scholarships are made on the recommendation of the School of Population and Public Health, in consultation with the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies.