Who We Are and What We Do
Michigan State University College of Human Medicine is a diverse, innovative, world class medical college. Its roots in medical education, clinical care and research and discovery run deep.
Embedded in the nation’s first land grant university, one of the largest in the nation, the College of Human Medicine has long been a pioneer: it was among the first colleges to provide community integrated medical education – one that is not reliant on a single hospital or hospital system.
Building on this legacy, the college has adopted a curriculum and system of medical education that is designed to parallel the environment in which many physicians typically practice. The college’s medical education leverages a community centered approach, providing students with clinical experiences in rural and urban clinical settings via eight community campuses that span the state of Michigan.
First and second-year students begin their medical school experience in either Grand Rapids or at the Michigan State University campus in East Lansing, where they apply knowledge of the sciences in their Early and Middle Clinical Experiences to their work in any of more than 100 locations. Third and fourth-year students in the Late Clinical Experience engage in disciplinary clerkships at any of nine primary teaching hospitals and 57 community hospitals throughout Michigan in eight community campuses. In addition, the college has developed several specialized certificate programs that include Medicine for Underserved and Rural Medicine.
The result of these efforts is an average annual enrollment at the college of more than 800 medical students, making it one of the largest providers of medical education in Michigan.
Over the last three decades, the college has developed a health education program inclusive of baccalaureate, medical school, public health, and graduate level courses and degrees. About 20% of the college’s yearly graduates are in public health programs. Notable among these are a certificate program for medical students, graduate (master’s and doctorate) programs in Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and a newly accredited master’s degree in public health.
The College of Human Medicine is also on the leading edge of research and scholarship. The college has sought out and established collaborative, multidisciplinary and multi-community research that takes advantage of its unique, distributed campus system. Its strengths range from clinical research that can be practically applied to humanities and social science scholarship to critical research in the basic science departments affiliated with the college on mechanisms underlying human diseases and their integration (e.g., Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Translational Neuroscience, Pharmacology, and Physiology).
The College of Human Medicine has made a significant investment in its headquarters’ campus in Grand Rapids along the Medical Mile with a focus on spurring health innovation in biomedical research, bioengineering and health technology that align with some of the biggest challenges in health: Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, autism, women’s health, and cancer. New opportunities for a health research and innovation corridor across rural and urban communities are also emergent.
In addition to its academic and research missions, the college has a substantial clinical mission. College of Human Medicine physician faculty offer primary care and specialty health care services to the greater Lansing community. The MSU Clinical Center, located on the MSU Lansing campus, is the single largest clinical practice in the Lansing community. This site offers multiple primary and specialty services, as well as a pharmacy, laboratory, and radiology services.
An Evolving and Emergent Medical School
Just as the field of medicine has evolved so has the College of Human Medicine. The college’s academic, research and community-facing missions extend beyond the molecular underpinning of pathological pathways in traditional medicine toward a growing investment in public health research and programs to combat health disparities more effectively and consistently by addressing social factors that impact health. Many of the college’s departments have invested in public health related faculty, and approximately than 50% of the college’s current NIH funding comes from public health projects.
One of the college’s critical assets is the Division of Public Health, which has nearly completed the path to becoming the Charles Stewart Mott Department of Public Health. The division focuses on community-based participatory research and is centered within the Flint community. Students and faculty researchers work side-by-side with community partners and health care providers to better understand and encourage healthy behaviors, mitigate chronic disease, identify environmental health risks, and examine social factors that influence community health. The majority of the college’s named professorships are in this division, which is has endowment funding to more than triple in size. Alongside a robust, innovative, and community-centered research agenda, are both medical students and more than 100 Master of Public Health students at any one time.
While the college’s legacy of service and community-based medicine are natural antecedents to public health, there remain important questions for the college to grapple with respect to its identity that will be critical to answer in the coming years.
Michigan State University College of Human Medicine is a diverse, innovative, world class medical college. Its roots in medical education, clinical care and research and discovery run deep.
Embedded in the nation’s first land grant university, one of the largest in the nation, the College of Human Medicine has long been a pioneer: it was among the first colleges to provide community integrated medical education – one that is not reliant on a single hospital or hospital system.
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