Tomorrow Is Here

 

Next-Generation Education

Preparing students to build and lead the future of health care.

Precision Health Care For All

Designing and developing precision treatments for all populations.

Making Wellness Ageless

Influencing the critical factors that affect the health of an aging population.

Creating Defenses Against Disease

Unraveling the complexities of human biology to build better defenses against disease.

New Frontiers for Better Health

Expanding capabilities to identify innovative solutions to health care problems.

Preparing students to build and lead the future of health care.

Our five colleges are home to students immersed in forward-looking curriculums that integrate digital, collaborative and experiential learning with a focus on the health of our diverse Arizona communities. We will increase accessibility to health sciences education by breaking down financial and geographic barriers, and empowering students to carve their own educational paths.

Bringing Future Health Professionals Together

By bringing together students from across the UArizona Health Sciences campus, students will enjoy robust interprofessional education opportunities.

Training Students for Arizona’s Diverse Communities

Students will be equipped to serve Arizona’s diverse population by learning how to offer culturally competent health care. Our students have opportunities for hands-on experience addressing health disparities in the U.S.-Mexico border region, preparing them to tackle the health challenges unique to the mostly rural, bicultural region with interconnected communities on both sides of the border. Through service learning and research projects, students work in tribal communities and border communities, coming face to face with the health disparities that affect the region.

Bringing Design Thinking to the Southwest

The Health Sciences design program will begin classes in fall 2020. Students will work in teams under the guidance of faculty coaches to create actionable solutions to real-world health care problems.

Designing and developing precision treatments for all populations.

We’re building a world-class program to develop novel, targeted therapies tailored to individual patients and diverse populations facing tomorrow’s pressing health challenges. We’re supporting health-care providers, genetic counselors and researchers in their efforts to advance precision health for the diagnosis, prediction and treatment of disease, for improved patient care and outcomes, and reduced health-care costs. We also will build upon our expertise to tackle the opioid epidemic and other problems surrounding substance misuse, addiction and chronic pain.

Creating New Partnerships with Community Health Organizations

Building upon our strong foundation of community health partnerships, the UArizona Health Sciences is expanding the breadth and diversity of engagement focusing on whole person precision health efforts. These efforts encompass research, education and service programs in new ways to expand precision health to the community through health care organizations, health advocacy groups, social service organizations, government agencies, and tribal governments and pan-tribal entities.

Current infrastructure through the University includes:

Building a Pipeline of Genetic Counselors

We’re excited to debut a new graduate program in genetic counseling — the only genetic counseling graduate program in Arizona. This new curriculum will fill a significant gap in genetic counselor training in the Southwestern United States.

Encouraging Strong Core Facilities to Foster Genetics and Genomics Research

Our researchers have quick access to in-house facilities and equipment that can analyze any number of specimens, big and small.

Influencing the critical factors that affect the health of an aging population.

We make wellness ageless by reimagining how the built environment can support the health and happiness of our aging population as well as the needs of families and communities. We also will research factors impacting cognitive health and changes occurring in the brain to better support quality of life as we age.

Promoting Health and Fostering Resilience in Aging

Understanding the neurological changes that occur during normal aging and exploring what environmental and genetic factors drive exceptional cognitive health span to determine optimal individual wellness strategies. We seek to promote health and foster resilience in aging, and increase recognition of the unparalleled wisdom, energy and experience of older adults for the benefit of all the world.

Partnering with the Community in Research

In addition to harnessing the power of big data, we’ll go directly into the community to engage our friends and neighbors as our partners in research. We will open conversations with families and communities, making sure we understand their needs and design research projects that will yield results that will help everyone enjoy a healthy aging process. By learning from the community, we’ll remain clear on what families need to maximize resilience in aging, and the community will benefit from the results of our research. After all, helping people is why we’re doing science in the first place.

Unraveling the complexities of human biology to build better defenses against disease.

We will investigate the connection between the immune system and microbiome to push prevention, diagnostics and treatments into the future. We will bring basic scientific discoveries from the bench to the bedside to combat chronic disease, health disparities and other health challenges.

Cataloging the Human Microbiome

Our bodies are homes to unseen worlds — our microbiome, the communities of bacteria and other microbes that interact with the immune systems to help or harm health. We will explore those mysterious worlds and uncover the role the microbiome plays in infection, inflammation, health and disease. We’ll figure out how the foods we eat interact with our gut microbes to influence our health. We’ll untangle genetic details to come up with clear profiles of the microbes that call our bodies home. We’ll leverage this knowledge to develop new diagnostics, prevention strategies and treatments for chronic diseases.

Bringing Laboratory Discoveries to Your Doctor’s Office

With our extensive library of tissue samples, we’ll be able to plumb the depths of the immune response, a mysterious process that protects from disease when it’s working right, and enables disease when it loses control. We want to figure out how some people stay healthy while others are unable to fight off disease — and find ways to help everyone maintain their health by nurturing healthy immune systems. We want everyone to reap the benefits of these scientific discoveries — in the hospital, in their doctor’s office, in the pharmacy.

Expanding capabilities to identify innovative solutions to health care problems.

We will build advanced analytical capabilities that drive health-care research by expanding access to centralized, secured and robust databases while upholding the highest standards for privacy and confidentiality. We will connect researchers and students across disciplines to apply human-centered design thinking to health problems and nurture innovative technologies and digital solutions.

Harnessing Data for Precision Care

Our researchers will have access to robust datasets that overflow with information about genetics, health and disease. Fueled by vast computational power, they’ll mine these datasets to unravel the mysteries of human health.
With privacy concerns more prevalent than ever, we’ll establish security measures that ensure sensitive data remains protected and confidential.

Health Sciences Collaborative

We will create an advisory with consolidated research and translation services and develop programming and tools that will increase 4IR health sciences research by creating an environment to facilitate the exchange of resources and expertise.