Nevada’s goal for health sciences: Unity

Friday, Jan. 26, 2007 | 8:43 a.m.

By trying to create a statewide health science system, Nevada's universities and colleges are going against the grain.

Many academic systems around the country showcase their health sciences at a traditional medical center - a teaching hospital filled with eager interns and residents, and an adjoining academic campus with medical classrooms and faculty offices for physicians and nurses who teach.

Nevada has a different vision, which is why the term "health science center" is avoided. It suggests the existence of a flagship facility.

Nevada is trying to build a health science system, by unifying the various and scattered programs offered by UNLV, UNR, Nevada State College, Desert Research Institute and the state's four community colleges.

In the past, the health science programs were islands unto themselves, with officials at one campus unaware of what was offered at another. The institutions rarely shared or collaborated and they openly competed for money, staff and space.

At today's meeting of the Nevada Higher Education System's Board of Regents, Chancellor Jim Rogers will explain to regents the benefits of consolidating the fractured system into one tidy basket.

That strategy, Rogers believes, will enhance the state's ability to produce and retain more doctors and nurses, enrich community outreach and education programs, and increase research efforts to improve patient care.

The timing is urgent because Rogers & Co. need the state Legislature to cough up big money in its upcoming session. And the legislators are leaning heavily on Rogers to line up private money to help. But donors first want to make sure the state is behind Rogers. In something of a vicious triangle, each side wants a commitment from the other before deciding its own level of support.

"This is all coming to an intersection, all at the same time," Rogers said. "We need to get the product out there to sell to lawmakers and donors, and we need to get some cash, $10 (million) to $20 million, committed by the time the Legislature votes.

"If we don't have any of it by the end of the session, that is where the crash comes."

As Rogers has triaged the system's financial needs, the first priority is for $194 million in state funds and $47 in private money to expand the University of Nevada School of Medicine and double the state's nursing programs.

Gov. Jim Gibbons has pledged $110 million toward construction costs for the health science system but has left Rogers and other higher education officials in the dark regarding operating costs.

"There is no sense building a building if we can't put people in it," Rogers said.

Nevada has the smallest medical school in the West, and officials want to double the student body. They also want to double the number of post-medical school residency training programs under the belief that if doctors train here, they will stay here.

But to do that, the medical school needs more than 80 new professors and the office, classroom and laboratory space to house them.

The state's nursing schools similarly need more professors and space.

In the proposal being pitched to regents today and to lawmakers in the coming months, UNLV, UNR and Nevada State College will share new and renovated facilities on UNLV's Shadow Lane Campus and in a new facility in downtown Las Vegas.

Already home to the UNLV School of Dental Medicine, the Shadow Lane Campus is in the heart of the West Charleston Boulevard medical corridor that includes University Medical Center, Valley Hospital Medical Center and the Southern Nevada Health District. It is also across the street from where UNR's medical school leases space for its Las Vegas professors.

Officials hope that sharing space and training nurses and doctors in the same building will foster outreach and research initiatives across disciplines and institutions, with the state's eight institutions working together to promote health care.

Rogers' health science team is also seeking two of the 61 acres of Las Vegas-owned land at Union Park to build a Center for Healthy Aging next to the planned Lou Ruvo Brain Institute. With the Ruvo Institute to house the best of the medical school's experts in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, the Healthy Aging center next door will incorporate related specialists in neurogenetics, gerontology and wellness programs.

Rogers also wants to move the Las Vegas system office, now in leased space at Flamingo and Lindell roads, to the Union Park site and partner with a developer to leverage the land's $7.5 million value to build up to 250,000 square feet of additional medical office space. That lease revenue will help pay for future expansions of the health science system, Rogers said.

But Rogers and Marcia Turner, the interim vice chancellor for health science, said the real value of the system can be seen in five research initiatives that span the state's eight institutions, the Nevada Cancer Institute and the Ruvo Institute.

Researchers from across the state are looking at how to advance the treatment of radiation care for cancer patients, neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, addictions, diabetes and obesity, and injury prevention.

Turner wants $13.1 million from the state to expand those efforts and help professors better compete for federal grants.

"The name of the game in science right now is interdisciplinary research, and this is a perfect match for Nevada," said Ron Yasbin, dean of UNLV's College of Sciences who is heading up the work looking at radiation treatment with Nevada Cancer Institute.