One of the Nation's First Medical School's Reborn

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The last decade for the Medical College of Georgia School of Medicine has yielded strategic, phenomenal growth in educational, research and clinical initiatives in diseases affecting every family in Georgia and the United States.

Growth in areas such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes, is validated by unprecedented research funding and clinical activity as well as a re-chiseling of the face of MCG, Georgia’s health sciences university.

These initiatives are reflected in five discovery institutes being launched to enhance collaboration between basic and clinician scientists. The discovery institutes – Brain & Behavior, Cardiovascular, Diabetes & Obesity, Immunologic and Vision Science – will more efficiently advance patient treatment and disease prevention.

The institutes reflect the health needs of Georgians and complement national initiatives to optimize clinical-translational research that yields life-impacting results, such as new diagnostic tools and drug therapies. A sixth Research Discovery Institute will use a similar approach to translate scholarly innovations in medical education.

To accommodate growth, research space has essentially doubled in the last handful of years and existing laboratory facilities are being upgraded.

An additional research facility is under study as part of the School of Medicine's plan to better meet the physician needs of our rapidly growing state.

The 2009 freshman medical school class of 190 students - already one of the largest class sizes in the nation - will grow by 60 percent over the next dozen years to a total class size of 1,200. In fact, the School of Medicine is in the process of admitting 230 students for the fall 2010 class, which will include the first 40 students at the new, four-year Medical College of Georgia/University of Georgia Medical Partnership campus in Athens.

The Athens campus is part of medical school expansion plan that is occurring at the home campus in Augusta as well as at clinical campuses, in southwest Georgia, based at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Albany, and in southeast Georgia, based at St. Joseph's/Candler Health System in Savannah.  The Athens campus, a partnership between two Georgia research universities also will enable expansion of the M.D.-Ph.D. program as well as research initiatives at both universities.

These expanding partnerships with physicians and hospitals throughout Georgia is enabling students to get a variety of excellent clinical experience, from small community practices to tertiary care facilities.

That partnership between two Georgia research universities also will enable expansion of the M.D.-Ph.D. program as well as research initiatives at both universities. Expanding partnerships with physicians and hospitals throughout Georgia is enabling students to get a variety of excellent clinical experience, from small community practices to tertiary care facilities.

MCG School of Medicine also is leading a statewide initiative to foster expansion of residency training which is necessary to grow more physicians for Georgia.

The medical school curriculum is being fine-tuned, with an early, ongoing emphasis on patients and an integrated approach to learning that better reflects how medicine is practiced.

The admissions process also is evolving to accommodate student growth.

What started in 1828 in two borrowed rooms in Augusta, Georgia’s old City Hospital has only just begun.