University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center

New Mexico is one of the most beautiful and culturally rich regions in the United States.  Our living history extends back long before the birth of the United States.  Successive waves of immigration occurring over the last thousand years have brought together a wide variety of cultures in a single geographical location.  The various Pueblo and Apache tribes, the Navaho nation, multiple Hispanic cultures, and the Western European cultures combine into a surprisingly harmonious multicultural society wherein each culture also retains its distinct identity.  Psychiatrists at the School of Medicine are confronted daily with the varying concerns of traditional and modern communities over a wide socioeconomic spectrum.

Albuquerque, named after the Spanish Duque de Alburquerque (the first ‘r’ disappeared at some point) who granted the land for its establishment, is today a lively, growing city of well over half a million inhabitants.  Its increasingly metropolitan atmosphere is still strongly influenced by the independent frontier spirit of survival that dominates rural New Mexico.  The city is the home of the University of New Mexico, which recently celebrated its centennial.  The University traditionally derives its strengths from rich local intellectual resources in the sciences, anthropology and the fine arts.  The growth of Albuquerque and the development of large Federal technical installations in New Mexico (such as the Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories, the Phillips Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base, and the White Sands Missile Range) have furthered and supported the University’s scientific and technological development. 

The School of Medicine is a relative newcomer to the University.  It was established in 1964 and graduated its first class of 24 students in 1968.  Today it graduates approximately 73 students per class.   Despite its small size, the School of Medicine has a national reputation for clinical, scientific, and educational innovations.  New Mexico’s limited resources (and our high desert culture) have furthered a tradition of productive interdepartmental collaboration and support; cross-disciplinary research and education is commonplace, and valued.

The UNM School of Medicine has achieved national and international recognition for its innovative medical education programs.  The School now holds one of only eight grants awarded nationwide by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to develop a new curriculum with increased emphasis on community-based health care.  Similarly, the School of Medicine has achieved national recognition for its programs in family medicine, cancer research and treatment, genomics, trauma care, immunology and infectious disease, school-based health care, and psychiatry