Health Sciences System ends after 10 years of achieving Nevada public medical education milestones

The Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE) announced today that its Health Sciences System (HSS) has been phased out with statewide medical education and research coordination being returned to the state’s public colleges and universities.

“Under the leadership of Dr. Marcia Turner, the HSS team did an outstanding job of putting Nevada in a strong position to improve our state’s health care education partnerships,” said Chancellor John V. White. “With 150 distinct health sciences programs within NSHE and an estimated 18,000 enrolled students, Marcia and her team were critical to creating and enhancing several substantial collaborations between our institutions and the various health care communities across the state.”

The Health Sciences System was established by the NSHE Board of Regents in 2006, and was initially funded by private donations through an effort led by former Chancellor James E. Rogers. The organization’s charge was to address Nevada’s community health issues through a System-wide effort to integrate and expand the education of health professionals through workforce development, as well as to foster collaborative research in health and health care.
“With the imminent opening of the new medical school at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and the ongoing collaborative successes of our institutions in the health care arena, the work of our Health Sciences System has reached a natural point of transition. With an eye toward empowering the institutions, the time has come to decentralize and shift the coordination and expansion of health sciences education, research, and state-wide clinical care, to include nursing programs, to the individual institutions to promote these programs from their unique perspectives,” added Rick Trachok, chairman of the Nevada Board of Regents.

Health Sciences System Major Accomplishments:

In discharging its mission to promote efficiency, effectiveness, collaboration and coordination among NSHE’s health sciences programs over the past decade, the HSS division has led the charge and/or provided critical operational and strategic support for many key initiatives designed to help foster the development of health sciences programs throughout Nevada. The following list highlights some of the major NSHE HSS projects and initiatives over the past decade, to help advance NSHE health sciences programs and to develop partnerships with key stakeholders:

• Internal NSHE Program Collaboration and Coordination: Worked closely with deans, directors and faculty members to promote growth and development of individual health sciences programs, and facilitate collaboration among NSHE programs and with external partners to promote NSHE’s two medical schools, one dental school, seven nursing schools, two schools of community health, one school of physical therapy, numerous mental and behavioral health programs and approximately 150 allied health degree and certificate programs, to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of NSHE health sciences programs to better meet the needs of our students and our state.
• External Health Care Stakeholder Collaboration and Coordination: Served as primary liaison representing NSHE to external public and private entities to promote partnership development and collaboration with entities such as: Nevada Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation (DETR), Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GOED), University Medical Center of Southern Nevada (UMC), Nevada Hospital Association (NHA), the Clark County Medical Society (CCMS), Nevada Rural Health Network (NRHN), Nevada Nurses Association (NNA), and others, to promote the efficiency and effectiveness of NSHE health sciences programs, and ensure that they are fully engaged with community partners to better serve our students and our industry and our state.
  • $15.75 million in state support to fund construction of and equipment for the 31,500 square-foot Clinical Simulation Center of Las Vegas, a state-of-the-art mock hospital designed to provide skills training for nursing and medical students from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), Nevada State College (NSC), and the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) at the UNLV Shadow Lane Campus in Las Vegas, 2007.
  • $35 million in state support to help fund construction and equipment for the Pennington Health Sciences Building, a facility designed to support education and training for the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine, and the Orvis School of Nursing on the UNR campus in Reno, 2007.
  • $33.8 million in state support to fund the design and ultimate construction of and equipment for a $45 million facility to house the UNLV Schools of Nursing and Physical Therapy on the UNLV Shadow Lane Campus, 2007.
  • $3 million in state support to fund renovation of Savitt Hall at UNR to support medical education at UNR, 2007.
  • $1 million in state support to fund renovations of Cain Hall to support nursing education at UNR, 2007.
• $33.07 Million to Support a New UNLV School of Medicine, and Expansion of the UNR School of Medicine: HSS served with the core leadership team charged by the Regents to develop plans for expanding public medical education, including developing plans to secure $33.07 million in state funding, including $26.67 million for the creation of the new UNLV School of Medicine, and $6.4 million for the expansion and relocation of the UNR School of Medicine, and support related development and transition efforts.
• $12 million, 9-acre Land Transfer for UNLV School of Medicine Facilities and Academic Health Center Development: HSS served on the core negotiating team in 2016 charged with facilitating the transfer of land at the corner of Shadow Lane and Pinto Lane, north of the UNLV Shadow Lane Campus, from Clark County to UNLV for the future home of the UNLV School of Medicine, and coordinating the development of a related Preliminary Affiliation Agreement between UNLV School of Medicine to formalize the partnership between the UNLV School of Medicine and the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada (UMC) in order to initiate development of a robust Academic Health Center at UMC.
• $2.25 Million Federal Grant Support: HSS facilitated the grant request and management for two major federal grants to support high-tech equipment purchases to support medical and nursing training, including a grant of $958,425 in 2007 and $948,587 in 2008 from Department of Health and Human Services Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to fund clinical skills and educational equipment, as well as a $350,000 grant award from the federal Economic Development Administration (EDA) to support critical equipment upgrades to support medical and nursing training at the Clinical Simulation Center of Las Vegas in 2016.
• $5 Million Grant from The Lincy Foundation: HSS facilitated a $5 million grant from The Lincy Foundation in 2008 to support the operations of the NSHE Health Sciences System and to support the development of NSHE health sciences programs and initiatives.
• 4-Year Chairmanship of the Governor’s Workforce Development Board Health Care and Medical Services Sector Council: Vice Chancellor Turner served as Chairperson of the Governor’s Workforce Development Board Health Care and Medical Services Sector Council from 2011-2016. This Council was charged to work with a diverse group of health care industry leaders to identify ways to support workforce development in health-sciences occupations to provide more career opportunities for students, to support growing industry demand, and to promote economic development.
• $143,000 Community Health Worker (CHW) Certificate Development Pilot Program: HSS managed a grant from 2014-2016, funded by the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation (DETR, $88,000) and Nevada Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS $43,000) to create a statewide, standardized entry-level pathway into health sciences careers and support industry demand for patient navigators to help disaggregate the workforce, and $15,000 from the Nevada Rural Health Network to convert the in-class curriculum to a 100% on-line course to create greater access for rural and urban students unable to attend in-person classes.
• $450,000 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation “Future of Nursing” Grants: Vice Chancellor Turner served as Principal Investigator for two consecutive statewide grants totaling $300,000 from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), which were matched with $150,000 from the Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation (DETR), to promote advancements in nursing workforce development to ensure that nurses are prepared to meet the current and future needs of patients and employers as part of the RWJF, AARP and Institute of Medicine (IOM) national “Future of Nursing” Campaign (Grant #1 2014/15, Grant #2 2016/17).
• $3.14 Million Disability Resource Centers Service Expansion Contract: HSS facilitated contracts with the Nevada Department of Training, Employment and Rehabilitation (DETR) Vocational Rehabilitation and four NSHE Disability Resource Centers for a combined state and federal budget of $3.14 million, to develop “Career Connect” programs to provide increased levels of support for students with disabilities at the Disability Resource Center at Truckee Meadows Community College (TMCC $902,732, 2014-2017), Western Nevada College (WNC $330,976, 2014-2017), University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV $1.09 million, 2017-2019) and College of Southern Nevada (CSN $819,887, 2017-2019).
• 18-Acre Shadow Lane Campus Master Planning and Las Vegas Medical District Advisory Committee: HSS managed programmatic and facilities planning of the UNLV Shadow Lane Campus, and facilitated interdisciplinary and multi-institutional involvement in planning for the ultimate build-out of the 18-acre campus located in the Las Vegas Medical District in 2009. Vice Chancellor Turner served as an inaugural member of the Las Vegas Medical District Advisory Committee to facilitate full involvement of NSHE programs in District-wide master facilities and programmatic planning and development since its inception.
• 300 Researchers Enrolled in NSHEresearch.org, a Searchable Database to Promote Research Collaboration: HSS created a researcher collaboration website (NSHEresearch.org) which includes a searchable database in which close to 300 NSHE researchers and students from across the eight NSHE institutions have uploaded their research interests, to enable researchers to search for like-minded researchers from within their home institution or across NSHE with whom they may collaborate on grants and research projects.