Over the last year, UAB School of Medicine faculty and staff have engaged in a comprehensive strategic planning effort that will guide the SOM's research enterprise for the next five years.
At the same time, faculty from our Birmingham, Huntsville, Montgomery, Tuscaloosa and Selma educational programs as well as leaders from the clinical practice community and public policymakers have convened to evaluate our programs in primary care and medical education. The UAB Health System has also conducted a parallel planning process for clinical care.
The goals for all of these efforts - collectively called AMC21, for we are committed to becoming the preferred Academic Medical Center for the 21st century -- are to build on our strengths, agree on areas that need strengthening, and commit our collective resources to sustainable excellence in each area of our mission.
Through strategic investment of institutional resources - financial and intellectual, from the University, the Health System and the University of Alabama Health Services Foundation, our practice plan - and leveraged by transformational philanthropic investment, we can - and will - become the preferred academic medical center of the 21st century.
Our plan has seven thematic priority areas:
- Cancer
- Diabetes, obesity and metabolism
- The neurosciences
- Infectious diseases and global health
- Cardiovascular biology
- Immunology and autoimmunity
- Transplantation - kidney, pancreas, liver, heart and lung
Other key elements of the plan include research infrastructure and technology platforms. To guide investment, Steering Committees in those areas worked to quantify and prioritize their ambitious plans for excellence throughout the spring and summer.
As a result, we have a broad scope of investments, all aimed at empowering our faculty to achieve new heights of excellence. These areas include:
- New drug discovery and research acceleration pilot grant funds that are open to all faculty.
- New multi-investigator pilot funds to catalyze larger multi-investigator grant submissions.
- Funds to support one to two symposia per year in each priority area, which will bring the best and brightest from across the country here to UAB to participate alongside and exchange ideas with our faculty and students in leading edge areas of science and medicine.
- Funds to enhance research core facilities and key technology platforms, including:
- Imaging - a new PET/Cyclotron Advanced Imaging Facility
- Informatics
- Biorepositories
- Genomics/proteomics
- Outcomes research and health disparities
- Center for Clinical and Translational Science
- Funds to invest in the professional development of our faculty as well as recruitment of new faculty to enhance programs and build the critical mass of investigators needed for success in our identified areas of greatest promise;
- A bridge funding program in partnership with all departments to ensure that our faculty have the best opportunities to get re-funded in this time of intense competition due to very tight pay lines from the National Institutes of Health
- Additional funds to compensate our faculty and staff based on performance so we are as competitive as possible.
Primary care and medical education committees have also prioritized their needs and opportunities, and we are making strategic investments in those areas as well.
Our success is predicated on our people - our students, faculty and staff, and our leadership at the department, division and center level. We are working every day to recruit and retain the best in each of those areas, and remain committed to becoming the preferred Academic Medical Center of the 21st century.
