by Abigail Ramirez
Daily Lobo
A national center for health policy will be established at UNM with an $18.5 million donation from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The University and the foundation announced the plans Thursday.
The donation is the largest private gift in UNM's history.
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"I think the thing that is obviously exciting from a social perspective is that we can bring to bear, perhaps, solutions that help the population in New Mexico," said David Harris, UNM president. "More than that, I thought the amount that they were talking about - $18.5 million - was unbelievable. I mean, you just don't do that every day at the University of New Mexico."
The center's goal will be to recruit minorities to the health policy field.
The program will be started with $10.5 million. An endowment will be established with the rest of the money.
Students will participate in economic, social science and political science doctorate programs to prepare them for leadership in the field.
The center will offer financial and social support to retain minority students.
"I think we have to be a place where knowledge is generated and then applied to the social issues in a way that transforms communities - that transforms nations," said Reed Dasenbrock, provost and interim executive director of the center.
Recruiting an executive director for the center is the first priority, Harris said. Faculty members will be hired after a director is found.
"The goal is to have 100 students over the next five years either graduate through the center or be enrolled through the center," said Adam Coyne, director of media relations at the foundation.
The center is supposed to be operating by the fall.
A location for the center has not been decided, Harris said.
The foundation chose UNM because of its level of expertise in medicine, nursing, pharmacy, political science and economics, he said.
The University's diversity was also appealing, he said.
"By increasing the diversity, I think you are really going to start to see the implementation of policies that reflects Americans in the country," he said.
It's important to give minorities a voice in health care issues, said John Lumpkin, senior vice president of the foundation.
"We are hoping that by changing the face of that population, we can change the nature of the debate by having the issues of disparity and other issues brought into the national level," he said.
The possible benefits of the center are worth the money, Harris said.
"I think that we all know that we have a large percent of our population that doesn't have access to health care," he said. "It's something that everybody wants to solve, but nobody has been able to. I think if it ends up with strategies that improve access to health care, it would not have been a very large investment."
