Newsroom

PART 4: The Assets We Have

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Think for a minute about the inventory of assets this community can bring together to help us create a medical school and health science center in Austin:

-- We have a world-class research university that already trains students in basic sciences, pharmacy, nursing, public health, healthcare policy, social work, and other disciplines that complement comprehensive medical training and its growing commercialization.

-- We have a healthcare district that’s matured from start-up to successful, and because of that success, it's positioned to address its deeply held mission – to ensure that every Austinite has access to adequate healthcare – from innovative angles.

-- We have partnerships between the Seton Healthcare Family, UT-Southwestern and the UT Medical Branch in Galveston, through which Austin receives 200 medical residents in 11 different programs, as well as 100 third- and fourth-year medical students, to train in our hospitals.

-- We have more than 200 biotech and life science companies, which employ an estimated 7,000 people in the region.

-- We have the Dell Children’s Medical Center, a truly one-of-a-kind place offering Central Texas families an incredible range of healthcare services and a unique, family-centered approach to healing. 

-- There’s the Dell Pediatric Research Institute, created by the Dell Foundation and the University of Texas – a state-of-the-art facility devoted to understanding and ending childhood diseases and disorders. 

-- And we have growing healthcare services for veterans, including a new facility – now under construction – that will have space for significantly expanded services and more than 300 employees. 

That’s a very small part of the list.  It all adds up to the gradual, almost organic growth of medical education and research in Austin. 

What we need is a spark, a catalyst, real goals – a focused community effort.  It's time to go from incremental to transformational.