Establishing a new footprint in research

This year has been one of hard work and determination to grow and build on the leadership of the JOL and my predecessors in the dean’s office: Dr. Bob Rich, Dr. Ray Watts and Dr. Anupam Agarwal. Their efforts, along with the efforts of the School of Medicine faculty and all of UAB Medicine, have led to an increase in our funding from the National Institutes of Health. We’re now No. 26 in the NIH rankings with $156 million in grant support, up significantly from where we were last year, our first positive growth in 12 years. Growing our research programs is like the little boy walking up an escalator that's moving downward: if we stop moving forward, we don’t just stop—we go backwards.

Over the past several months, I’ve been speaking with the faculty and leadership about AMC21 Reload, the re-initiation of the UAB Medicine strategic plan. We worked to identify five cross-cutting areas that can build upon UAB’s strengths to make the School of Medicine nationally prominent in core research areas, have a high translation opportunity for patient care, and can build on UAB strengths to make the School of Medicine nationally prominent in research. 

As you know, we had identified personalized medicine and informatics as two of these research areas and sought broad input from the faculty about the three remaining focus areas.  I’m pleased to tell you that they’ve now been selected. These areas are to incorporate all 16 of the core areas of investigation, including bioenergetics and regenerative medicine. They are: 

• Fundamentals of Basic Science Discovery. There’s a continual focus on basic science discovery as it fuels translational ideas and research, and we need to focus our basic science efforts in order to strengthen our overall research program. Having more basic scientists focusing on these efforts will have a broad impact on all our scientific programs throughout the School of Medicine.
• Inflammation, Infection and Immunity. We have tremendous immunology and microbiology programs here at UAB. Inflammation is a prominent focus area right now with research into the microbiome and autoimmune diseases.
• Population Health, Health Disparities and Outcomes Effectiveness Research. We have one of the best health disparities and outcomes groups in the country and that’s something we can continue to grow. Health disparities are nationally important, but just as importantly, those disparities have a direct impact on the patients physicians at UAB see each day.

Each of these programs broadly allows UAB to compete in strength areas, be competitive on national scope and actively compete for the best scientists.

The Academic Enrichment Fund—the directed commitment from UAB Medicine’s clinical enterprise to support research growth in the School of Medicine—will play a key role in the development of these new AMC21 initiatives. We must stay on track to fully fund the $40 million AEF amount over the next three years, which will allow us to recruit new and funded faculty, support our faculty and rebuild infrastructure needs around buildings and cores.