Health care in Buffalo and Western New York is taking on a new life. That’s because systems and structures that not long ago were bending and breaking under the weight of competition are now being taken apart and rebuilt, piece by piece—collaboratively. New leadership in the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, new demands on medical education in the 21st century and new economic realities for health care providers have resuscitated ideas and partnerships that until recently would have been dismissed as implausible. In this inaugural issue of UB Medicine, we will describe this resurgence by providing you with a synopsis of some of the more notable—and concrete—alterations to Buffalo’s health sciences’ landscape. These changes include plans underway to move the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences downtown, to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus—close to where it resided between 1893 and 1953 on what was known as “the High Street Campus.” We will also tell you about the recently completed UB Clinical and Translational Research Center (CTRC), a world-class facility constructed in conjunction with Kaleida Health’s Global Vascular Institute. Located at Goodrich and Ellicott streets and connected by a sky bridge to Buffalo General Medical Center, the CTRC serves as an anchor for UB’s medical-science facilities downtown. You will also learn about the soon-to-be constructed John R. Oishei Children’s Hospital on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, which will be connected to the new school and to the recently opened research and clinical care buildings.
In the last six years, under the leadership of Dean Michael E. Cain, MD, the school has recruited nine nationally prominent medical educators to chair departments and divisions, many in close collaboration with our community health care partners. More new faculty leaders will be joining the school before 2016, when the first class of medical students enters its new home downtown. This begins a planned expansion of the school, the goal of which is to add 100 new faculty and increase enrollment by 30 percent. While these are the most visible components of change currently taking place, many other collaborative projects are unfolding behind these and other, yet-tobe-built walls. Each is serving in its own way to break down old barriers and revitalize a regional health care economy being transformed with the ultimate goal of improving care for residents of our community and beyond. We look forward to telling you these stories in the years ahead as change takes place, one collaboration at a time.
In addition to these “bricks-and-mortar” projects, there is another exciting building project taking place that we will report on.
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