Strategic Areas of Focus
Health, Society, and Biomedical Science
USF seeks to maintain and improve health and well-being for all individuals while promoting equity of access to quality affordable care, emerging treatments, innovation and better quality of life, particularly among diverse communities in the Tampa Bay region, the state of Florida and beyond. The Health, Society, and Biomedical Science initiative builds on existing strengths in our understanding of the basic mechanisms of disease and links this work to translational and clinical researchers who devise rational diagnostics, treatments, and cures. USF’s current strengths in health sciences span the biomedical sphere, including discoveries in Type I diabetes and autoimmune diseases, cardiovascular disease treatment, neurology centers of excellence, biomedical engineering, drug delivery and discovery and infectious and vector-borne disease discovery and prevention.
The health research and education portfolio at USF is represented across colleges, community partners, multiple programs, centers and institutes. Health construed more broadly engages a wide range of colleges and programs including the Morsani College of Medicine, the Taneja College of Pharmacy, and the colleges of Arts and Sciences, Behavioral and Community Sciences, Engineering, Nursing, and Public Health. Related work in these colleges comprise behavioral health; social work and aging; health economics, informatics, and communication; migration, food security and water quality; and health humanities, which collectively enable health science interdigitation throughout the university.
The economic potential and demographic profile of the Tampa Bay metro area, the state of Florida, and USF’s institutional and community partnerships are also key to USF’s leadership in health. USF’s downtown Morsani College of Medicine and Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation brings students and faculty closer to the college’s primary teaching hospital, Tampa General Hospital (TGH). Central to this is the university’s enhanced affiliation agreement with TGH, which is establishing the first clinically integrated academic medical center on the west coast of Florida. This center is strengthened by an integrated office of clinical research to enhance collaborations and efficiency and will bring the benefits of academic medicine to patients and support world-class health care research and education. The James Haley V.A. Hospital is another core teaching affiliate for USF, providing an important site for both inpatient and outpatient education of our medical and allied health students and residents.
Analysis of the health enterprise at USF, located near world-class hospitals and health
facilities, reveals a tremendous number of opportunities to connect existing strengths
with areas of unique competitive advantage through research, education, and patient
care. Another key enabler is the university’s longstanding relationship with the H.
Lee Moffitt Cancer Center
& Research Institute (MCC), a National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center located
on the USF Tampa campus. This relationship features graduate programs in cancer epidemiology
and immunology—including USF’s highly regarded PhD program in cancer biology that
places doctoral students into research positions at MCC—along with joint faculty appointments
to enhance opportunities for collaboration and shared research infrastructure to create
efficiencies.
Leveraging these partnerships with a broad, diverse array of providers, researchers, educators, and partners specific to the Tampa Bay region who embrace the vision of an integrative health community to promote social sustainability, USF produces world-class research and educates a resilient, culturally conscious workforce.