3 min read October 2023 — UMass Chan Medical School is a public medical school dedicated to educating physicians, scientists and advanced practice nurses. Invest: spoke with Chancellor Michael F. Collins about the institution’s highlights and strategic plan as well as efforts to address healthcare inequity.
What are some notable highlights for UMass Chan Medical School in terms of overall growth over the past year?
We just celebrated our 50th commencement. We’re on the newer end of medical schools in America. One of our faculty members received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2006 for the discovery of RNA interference. We have more than $300 million in annual research funding with just under $200 million of that coming from the National Institutes of Health. We are completing a new education and research building that will bring together teams focused on rare diseases. It will house 77 principal investigators when it opens in Spring 2024 and we will be recruiting 55 new faculty. In 2021, we received a transformational gift of $175 million from the Morningside Foundation. We are increasing our class size in the T.H. Chan School of Medicine to respond to a national need to educate more physicians. Here at UMass Chan our medical students are able to pursue specialized studies that best suit their interests and goals, either in one of seven pathways here on our main campus or through innovative tracks on each of our regional campuses. UMass Chan-Baystate in Springfield is home to the PURCH, or population-based urban and rural community health MD track and we just opened our second branch campus at Lahey Hospital & Medical Center, which has a special LEAD@Lahey program for medical students interested in leadership, health systems science and interprofessional education.
UMass Chan also has a strategic plan focused around six pillars. One is education. We’ll be increasing class sizes and focus on leadership development. We are also creating an academy for faculty. In our clinical and basic science research efforts, we focus on two separate pillars. We’ll be creating a new department on human genetics and evolutionary biology and prioritizing digital health and first-in-human clinical trials. We’re very focused on being an excellent community-engaged institution with a large, global presence educating people across the world. For instance, we’ve been partnering with the Liberian government for many years now helping to rebuild the health care infrastructure and medical education program within the country. We must always be focused on operational effectiveness and efficiency, which includes entrepreneurial activity and philanthropy. The sixth pillar of our strategic plan is focused on better measuring, tracking and evaluating efforts in diversity, equity and inclusion. We have many initiatives around hiring faculty who represent groups that are underrepresented in medicine. We also have a large initiative around inequity in healthcare. Our faculty and students engage within our communities and beyond on these issues. Many would say that your zip code is more important than your genetic code when it comes to health parameters. We wanted to take all those programs that existed around the medical school and bring them together under one set of leadership. We have an uncommon and genuinely special culture of collaboration amongst our faculty and staff that we call “Advancing Together.”
What specific challenges is the institution tackling and how are you navigating them?
We have no problem recruiting and retaining students. We are so competitive as a medical school that our graduation rate is literally 100%. However, the cost of education remains a problem and societal demographics are changing and there are fewer high-school age students which has raised immediate concerns at the undergraduate level and could present some downstream pipeline ramifications for graduate-level institutions like UMass Chan. We are interested in recruiting a class with “miles traveled,” taking into account individuals who have accumulated lived experiences, such as participating in the Peace Corps or received Fulbright Scholarships.
National research funding is also a concern. Our nation spent $6 trillion to $7 trillion responding to COVID-19 because it didn’t invest sufficiently in foundational science and public health prior to the pandemic. Our nation should invest more in biomedical research and public health infrastructure, both of which are bipartisan issues, which is exceedingly rare in today’s political environment.
We are a state medical school and receive roughly 5% of our budget in the course of a year from state funds. We are competing with institutions with large endowments, anywhere from $5 billion to $20 billion. Our endowment is below $500 million, making it vitally important that we maintain diverse revenue streams including philanthropy and entrepreneurial activities that can support our mission
There is a tremendous amount of concern around well-being in healthcare. Doctors and nurses are retiring or leaving the profession in large numbers because of what they encountered during the pandemic.
There aren’t enough beds available in Massachusetts hospital emergency rooms because any excess in the system has been rung out. As the population ages, healthcare needs will increase resulting in a greater strain on the healthcare system. A study out of the University of Michigan says 40% of female physicians reduce their practice or leave medicine altogether within six years after starting residency training. We need to find ways to be more supportive employers. If you look nationwide, the average age at which a biomedical researcher receives their first RO1 grant is approximately 43 years old. These signs point to a tremendous amount of delayed gratification and burnout in the health professions.
What is your outlook for UMass Chan Medical School?
I’m extremely bullish despite the challenges. This is our moment. We are attracting high-quality learners and faculty in record numbers. Our research funding has almost tripled over the last 15 years. We are part of a great university system in a great state that values public higher education. We’re extremely well-positioned. It’s still very affordable to go to UMass. The institution is well managed and we’re much more focused on our strategic direction and opportunities. Our institution is getting ready to open a new building where the research focus will be on single gene defect diseases as our campus is committed to changing the course of history of disease. Our donors are extremely bullish and we need more of them. The leadership of the school will be here for the foreseeable future because we understand the importance of the mission that lies ahead of us.
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