Dr. Eileen de Villa, Toronto’s public health chief, taking leave of absence for medical treatment in New Zealand. Photo
M.A. De Villa is an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont. He works on the Public Health Capacity Project, a joint effort between York U. and the Canadian Public Health Agency.
M.A. De Villa, Toronto’s public health chief, taking leave of absence for medical treatment in New Zealand. Photo
The last time M.A. De Villa saw her colleagues at Queen’s University, they were getting ready to start their new job at the Canadian Public Health Agency for a salary of $116,000 to $126,000 a year.
“I would always wonder what our friends were up to,” said De Villa, one of nine public health experts hired this past fall to take positions that will bring total compensation to $185,000 to $203,000 a year.
De Villa, who will retire from public health after 31 years in the field, was on her way to the country’s other public health agency, the New Zealand Ministry of Health, when complications from a medical condition forced her to ask for a leave of absence.
“It was the first time in my career that I had really been sick,” she said on Thursday.
The illness has left her hospitalized for eight days, but De Villa said it has not left her mind.
“I’ve had all these thoughts about what I will miss about the job,” she said. “The most important ones are my colleagues, the people I work with every day.”
When she first became chief of public health at Toronto, she was surprised to discover she had a colleague who was almost her opposite — a close friend who became her confidante.
When she would catch up with Dr. Sharon Levy, who heads up medical oncology at Toronto