Texas A&M's New Concept in Health Science Centers

Readers of the Texas Medical Center News are familiar with the Institute of Biosciences and Technology, a part of Texas A&M that has been in Houston since 1992. They are probably aware of the role IBT serves as a hub for telecommunications in and out of the Medical Center. No doubt they also know how IBT's cutting-edge research joins health disciplines with the traditional strengths of Texas A&M in agriculture and engineering. Yet many people probably do not know how IBT is now functioning in a new entity within The Texas A&M University System.

IBT is a member of the newly constituted Texas A&M University System Health Science Center. It has three unique characteristics.

• First, it is the application of the land-grant university tradition to health. Texas A&M, as the largest land-grant university in the nation, has a 130-year tradition of education, research and service to the communities of Texas in agriculture and engineering. Our new health science center will extend that tradition into health.
  
  
• Second, the A&M System Health Science Center serves the state as a distributed, statewide institution which is present in multiple communities throughout Texas.
  
  
• Third, the health science center is in part a virtual health-related university, both with and without walls.

  The A&M System Health Science Center is designed as a land-grant university applied to health, with statewide education and research activities, as well as community service, based on the extension service model.

The institution has four overarching goals. The first is to increase access to health professions education and careers across the state through multiple access sites, geographically, as well as through distance learning. Secondly, the A&M System Health Science Center is conducting research which is both traditional basic research and research-based in the community and responsive to community needs. This will build on the trust of community leaders already attained through other extension efforts and will result in greater access to data and information at the community level. Outreach services are based on the extension model through collaboration with public agencies, public schools, health professionals and an emphasis on public service in cooperation, rather than competition, with medical colleagues in the community. And finally, the A&M System Health Science Center is conducting interdisciplinary research which removes traditional boundaries between pure health disciplines and other disciplines that will result in a major health impact.

For example, the institution is already doing research at the interface between food sciences and cancer prevention, between neurosciences and electrical engineering, between animal sciences and cardiovascular disciplines, between animal biotechnology and human organ transplantation, just to name a few. Therefore, we will continue to make joint faculty appointments in agriculture and medicine, public administration and public health, veterinary medicine and medicine, animal science and biotechnology, and others.

The A&M presence in all 254 counties of the state through the Texas Agricultural Extension Service puts the A&M System Health Science Center in a unique position to link food, agriculture, engineering, economics and demography with health.

The five components of the A&M System Health Science Center are: the College of Medicine in College Station, the Institute of Biosciences and Technology in Houston in the Texas Medical Center, the School of Rural Public Health in College Station, the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences with faculty in many locations, and the Baylor College of Dentistry in Dallas.

Additionally, the A&M System Health Science Center has just expanded its statewide presence by creating the Coastal Bend Health Education Center, serving the 19-county region surrounding Corpus Christi and Kingsville and by starting the new South Texas Center for Rural Public Health in the Rio Grande Valley in McAllen. These two organizations add to an existing statewide presence through partnerships with the Texas Agricultural Extension Service and Experiment Station as well as the five A&M nursing programs at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, Texas A&M International University in Laredo, Prairie View A&M University, Tarleton State University and West Texas A&M University in Canyon.

The A&M System Health Science Center's geographic distribution across the state forms the basis for an innovative, comprehensive approach to health professions' education, research and community service for Texans. This application of the land-grant tradition and extension service concept to health will prove beneficial to the health of Texans as the new millennium begins.

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©2006 Texas Medical Center

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