Thanks very much.
First I want to congratulate Ms. Nielsen on what you've been able to do with the bridging program. It shows what can happen, and your success could happen in lots of other areas. And I hope we can make sure that some examination of bridging programs and preceptors can help in terms of incorporating our foreign-trained health grads.
We have such great people here that I want to take a slightly different approach. Separate from what you've told us, if we're going to focus on quality and cost-effectiveness over the future of health and health care and evidence-based policy and practice and practice-based evidence...I want to just think about Cuba, where now every polyclinic has a statistician and an epidemiologist measuring what they're doing all the time and feeding back. The fact that they've now beat us on infant mortality speaks to actually measuring and adapting, and measuring again.
Dr. Neudorf, you have led the country, pretty well, in using health informatics and GIS mapping on the social determinants of health. And obviously the academic health facilities are worried about patient safety and measuring and adapting, whether it's hospital-acquired infections or.... It seems appropriate, in this week of National Nursing Week and World Health Week, that we are celebrating Florence Nightingale, who was a statistician more than she was the compassionate lady with the lamp.
How do we make sure that our health human resources include the people who can measure, make assessments, and manage not only in health promotion and disease prevention but also in the care we give?