The University of Alabama Medical Center is located on the campus of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, a modern urban university consisting of a nationally recognized medical center with six health-related schools, a comprehensive liberal arts college with six schools, and a graduate school. The annual enrollment at UAB exceeds 16,000.
UAB's health science schools include the Schools of Medicine, Dentistry, Health Related Professions, Optometry, Nursing, and Public Health. The School of Medicine has recently been cited in US News and World Report as the best of the "up and coming" and ranked among the top 25 medical schools in the nation. Current levels of grants and contracts make UAB one of the top research institutions in the nation, 6th in the nation in NIH funds, alone.
The Medical Center complex spans approximately six city blocks, south of downtown Birmingham. The patient care facilities within this area include University Hospital, Children's Hospital, Civitan International Research Center, Cooper Green Hospital, Engel Psychiatric Day Treatment Center, UAB Eye Foundation Hospital, Russell Ambulatory Center, Kracke Building, Family and Community Medicine Clinic, Smolian Psychiatric Clinic, Spain Rehabilitation Center, Center for Psychiatric Medicine, Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Wallace Tumor Institute (a Comprehensive Cancer Center), and the Kirklin Clinic - a 450,000 square foot outpatient care facility, designed by world-renowned architect I.M. Pei and opened in 1992.
Pathology residents share the above facilities with over 470 other residents from 26 accredited programs at UAB. Training resources available to residents and fellows include over 70 Centers of Research among which are the following: Arthritis,Cancer, Cardiovascular Diseases, AIDS, Macromolecular Crystallography, Oral Biology, Cystic Fibrosis,Diabetes, and Neurobiology, Aging, Metabolic Bone Disease, Cell Adhesion and Matrix, Spinal Imaging, and Genetics. The Department of Pathology actively participates in all of these centers. In addition, we have over 29,000-square-feet of research space within the Department.
Data for 2014 indicate the diagnostic resources which are available for clinical experience in Anatomic Pathology: the autopsy service (245 accessions), forensic autopsies (1,351 accessions), surgical pathology (41,224 accessions), and cytopathology (13,073 GYN specimens and 8,153 non-GYN). There are many other sources of diagnostic material . For example, UAB is the largest renal transplant service in the world, and there are also large and active programs in lung, heart/lung, liver, pancreas, small bowel, and bone marrow transplantation. Embryo and fetal pathology, and metabolic bone studies are also a rich source of material. Clinical experience for Laboratory Medicine draws from a patient base of greater than one million, generating 7 million tests at University Hospital and 1.8 million tests collectively at Children's Hospital and the Veterans Administration Hospital.
Faculty members from the Departments of Pathology, Medicine, Biochemistry, Microbiology, Cell Biology and Anatomy, Pharmacology, and Physiology and Biophysics are available as potential mentors. The Gene Therapy Program is one of the most active in the world as are the AIDS clinical trials and vaccine development programs. Research may be pursued at any point during residency training. Residents and fellows participate in over 250 conferences from other clinical and basic science departments at UAB. Teaching experience is gained through participation in pathology lectures for the School of Medicine.