UAB has for decades partnered with the city of Birmingham to improve education, health care and quality of life throughout the community and state. Every individual school is engaged in important service programs--locally and globally--and service-learning is deeply engrained across the curricula. For three consecutive years, UAB has been named to the President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll, the highest federal recognition a university can achieve for its commitment to civic engagement and service-learning.
As the largest single employer in the state, UAB remains the economic engine of Birmingham and Alabama, with an annual impact of $4.6 billion. In accordance with its refined Strategic Plan, drafted with campus-wide participation in 2010, UAB is strengthening its community partnerships, and forging new ones, to ensure that its state and region prosper in the global, knowledge economy.
Local and Global Outreach
The commitment to service and service learning runs deep and wide throughout all schools and departments at UAB. Through a host of innovative and effective programs, the university is significantly inproving health, education and quality of life, at home and around the globe. Here a but a few of those programs:
The UAB Minority Health and Health Disparities Research Center has received more than $69 million in federal funding to reduce minority health disparities, trained over 500 Community Health Advisors (CHAs) serving Birmingham's inner city and Alabama's Black Belt region, provided health screenings to more than 5,600, and significantly reduced disparities among lower-income women at higher risk for breast cancer.
UAB Hospital provided some $117 million last year in uncompensated care.
Through the School of Medicine’s Equal Access Birmingham program, faculty and students volunteer at Avondale’s M-Power Clinic and treat some 675 indigent patients annually, and the schools of Dentistry and Optometry do thousands of free screenings every year.
The Center for Urban Education equips inner-city school teachers with innovative strategies and skills geared specifically for urban classrooms, and has trained 80 teachers now working in high-needs schools in three partnering Birmingham school systems. The Greater Birmingham Math Partnership has been awarded some $12 million from NSF since 2004 and has provided professional development for more than 1,400 area math teachers.
Conducted in a beautifully renovated Victorian home near Five Points, The Alys Stephens Center’s ArtPlay program is arts education and outreach at its most engaging and enriching. Through partnership with local artists and UAB faculty and students, ArtPlay offers classes, workshops and performances for aspiring musicians, dancers and visual artists of all ages.
“Into the Streets,” a biannual event in partnership with Habitat for Humanity and other service agencies, enlists upwards of 800 students for volunteer projects throughout Birmingham.
As part of Study Away, students are doing outreach and research in such impoversished nations as Peru, Guatemala, Uganda, and the UAB chapter of “Engineers without Borders” has students working on vital community projects in a number of developing countries.
The Center for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia (CIDRZ) has started 148,000 Zambians on antiretroviral therapy (including 10,000 children), provided HIV testing for 789,000 women, and prevented over 20,000 children from contracting HIV.
Robust Economic Impact
Over four decades, UAB's strong partnership with its community has led to the economic revival of Birmingham, from a primarily steel and manufacturing-based economy to a thriving one based on healthcare, finance and other service industries. UAB's tremendous economic impact continues to grow, as the university works with Birmingham Business Alliance towards the aims of Blueprint Birmingham--and other organizations such as Operation New Birmingham, the Alabama Development Office, the Economic Development Partnership of Alabama-- to spur synchronous growth and development for the city, state and region.
Just how substantial UAB's economic impact is--and could be, with proper investment--is revealed in the 2010 UAB Economic Impact Study. Here are some highlights:
UAB currently has a $4.6 billion economic impact on Alabama, which is projected grow over a decade to $6.6 billion, generate 72,449 jobs and create $431.4 million in state and local tax revenue.
As the largest single employer in Alabama, UAB supports 61,025 jobs state-wide—that’s one of every 33 jobs.
$302.2 million in tax revenue to state and local governments; $1 in every $25 in the state’s budget is generated by UAB.
For every dollar invested by the state, UAB returns $16.23.
Much of UAB’s impact is generated by technology transfer—taking basic research discoveries to the marketplace—which is accomplished through several entities:
The UAB Research Foundation (UABRF) has since 1986 created more than $46 million in royalty and license fees, and assisted in the formation of some 40 spin-off companies.
rained over 500 Community Health Advisors (CHAs) serving Birmingham's inner city and Alabama's Black Belt region, provided health screenings to more than 5,600, and significantly reduced disparities among lower-income women at higher risk for breast cancer.
