- The College of Human Medicine is recognized as one of the nation’s leaders for community-based medical education. It is ranked among the nation’s top 20 medical schools in primary care and No. 7 for best programs in rural medicine by U.S. News & World Report.
- The college serves the entire state of Michigan, most notably in underserved areas, with campuses in seven communities and affiliations with 14 partner hospitals in Flint, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Lansing, Saginaw, Traverse City, and the Upper Peninsula. Nearly 3,000 physicians in these communities volunteer their time to teach College of Human Medicine students.
- The college has the broadest base of primary care medicine among all medical schools in Michigan and retains more physician graduates in the state than any other medical school. In addition, most physicians in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula are graduates of the College of Human Medicine.
- The diversity of the College of Human Medicine class is in the top 10 percent of medical schools in the nation.
- The College of Human Medicine has the largest class expansion of any LCME-accredited medical school. The college will double its enrollment in 2010 when the Secchia Center medical education building opens in Grand Rapids. Faculty in both East Lansing and Grand Rapids will instruct first- and second-year students, with third- and fourth-year students continuing their education—the clinical years—at the college’s seven community campuses.
- Established in 1966, the College of Human Medicine Office of Medical Education Research and Development is the oldest continuously operating office of medical education in the United States.
- The college is home to Medical Education Online, a premier open-access, peer-reviewed medical journal celebrating its second decade in publication. In addition, College of Human Medicine students publish the Medical Student Research Journal, the only online, peer-reviewed journal in the nation that is authored, reviewed, and published by medical students for medical students.
- Having secured $75 million in National Institutes of Health funding, the College of Human Medicine leads Michigan’s research efforts for the National Children’s Study, the largest human health study ever undertaken. In addition, the college administers the nation’s only training grant in perinatal epidemiology and the nation’s largest ongoing epidemiological study of the bio-psycho-social origins of preterm delivery.
- The College of Human Medicine is one of only a few institutions with multiple 3 Tesla MRI scanners dedicated to research and was the first to house a state-of-the-art PET/CT scanner complete with its own cyclotron to produce the necessary isotopes for the scanner.
- A record 261 College of Human Medicine physician faculty members are recognized on the Best Doctors in America list.
- The College of Human Medicine collaborates with McLaren Health System to direct the Great Lakes Cancer Institute.
- In cancer research, the College of Human Medicine is home to one of only four national Breast Cancer and the Environment Research centers and is one of only a few medical colleges engaged in community-based participatory research in cancer prevention and control to address cancer disparities. In addition, MSU has an ongoing program of National Institutes of Health–funded research between the Colleges of Human Medicine and Nursing using technology to engage cancer patients, their family caregivers, and oncology practices to improve cancer symptom management.
- The College of Human Medicine administers the nation’s only international research training program in the prevention of drug abuse and the nation’s only program project grant in neurohumoral control of veins in hypertension.
- The College of Human Medicine features centers for excellence in the research of hypertension, nanomedicine, women’s health, and child development and health outcomes. The college’s Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences is recognized for its work on the ethical, social, and policy dimensions of health care.
- A collaborative effort involving MSU’s Colleges of Human Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine and Saint Mary’s Health Care and Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital in Grand Rapids is certified by the Muscular Dystrophy Association as the only MDA/ALS center in the state and one of only 38 nationwide. The MDA center for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, has clinical sites in Grand Rapids and on the MSU campus in East Lansing.
- The College of Human Medicine has a unique multisite, community-based family and internal medicine geriatric fellowship program.
- The College of Human Medicine is home to the Institute for Health Care Studies, a multidisciplinary unit devoted to the improvement of health care through research, policy analysis, education, and outreach. The college is also home to the Great Lakes Research Into Practice Network, one of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s nationally recognized practice-based research networks dedicated to improving primary health care in Michigan. In addition, the college collaborates with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan to translate research in smoking cessation into prevention through statewide telephone quit lines available to seven million members statewide.
