Amid construction of a UCLA science building, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger awarded a $9-million grant to the UCLA School of Public Health and signed a bill in an effort to improve public health.

The money will fund a new laboratory dedicated to tracking and responding to disease outbreaks and will be located at the California NanoSystems Institute.

“This lab will improve California’s ability to diagnose and respond to disease outbreaks, bioterrorism and other threats – that is why both the state and Los Angeles are investing homeland security dollars into this project,” Schwarzenegger said.

The grant will triple the size of the original plans for the UCLA High Speed, High Volume Laboratory Network for Infectious Diseases – initially funded with $6 million from the federal 2006 Department of Defense Appropriations Bill – making the lab capable of processing high quantities of biological samples within hours.

The lab should be in full operation within a year, said Scott Lane, who will lead research at the facility; Lane has worked at the University of California-managed Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico for 24 years.

Linda Rosenstock, dean of the UCLA School of Public Health, said the lab will revolutionize the way scientists track disease outbreaks by dramatically shortening the time needed to produce effective vaccines.

“With this technology, we will be able to do for diseases what we do for weather: be able to forecast where and when diseases are coming,” Rosenstock said.

The lab will also become a training ground for public health and laboratory experts in infectious-disease management.

Lane said he is excited about the opportunities UCLA students will have to participate in cutting-edge research.

“I have been trying to get funding for this project for 10 years, so today is a pretty big day for me,” Lane said.

The bill Schwarzenegger signed, which establishes the state’s new Department of Public Health, also opens up a new professional sphere into which students of the UCLA School of Public Health will be able to explore.

The new department also presides over the new Office of Women’s Health and Office of Multicultural Health.

Bill author Sen. Deborah Ortiz, D-Sacramento, said the establishment of the new Department of Public Health was part of a four-year effort and was glad local public health officials will finally have state support.

Schwarzenegger said the Department of Public Health will also aid the state in improving emergency preparedness.

“Public safety is my top priority, personally,” said Schwarzenegger, who promised to collect more federal homeland security funds for California when he campaigned in 2003.

But not everyone in California is convinced the Republican governor is using all the resources available to him. A recent state audit showed that Schwarzenegger has not used half of the federal homeland security funds allotted to the state.

Nonpartisan state Auditor Elaine Howle wrote a letter to the governor and other legislators on Tuesday questioning whether California has “sufficiently tested the ability of the state’s medical and health systems to respond during emergencies.”

Of the $954 million in homeland security funds awarded to the state from 2001 to 2005, only 42 percent of it had been spent as of June 30, 2006.

In the letter, Howle said she is also concerned that the governor’s Office of Emergency Services is behind schedule in its review of the emergency plans for 35 of California’s 58 counties.

Howle’s concerns have taken center stage in the Democratic Party’s latest criticisms of the Schwarzenegger administration.

Jeff Millman, press secretary for the California Democratic Party, said this state should have more funding per capita than other states due to the state’s higher risk as a target for terrorism. Millman used Wyoming as a comparison, which has double the funding per capita that California has.

When asked about the auditor’s concerns, Schwarzenegger admitted that there is a problem with the amount of money being dedicated to homeland security and emergency preparedness in California, but to remember that he came into office in 2003 with those problems in full swing.

“You can’t fix all those problems in a three-year period,” Schwarzenegger said.