Our History
The University of North Texas Health Science Center, Fort Worth's medical school and more, is one of the nation's distinguished graduate academic health science centers, dedicated to education, research, patient care and service. It comprises the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine (TCOM), the Department of Physician Assistant Studies, the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, the School of Public Health and the School of Health Professions. UNT Health is the TCOM faculty practice program providing direct patient care.
A 33-acre, $125 million campus located in Fort Worth's Cultural District, the Health Science Center has a $135 million annual budget and adds approximately $500 million into Fort Worth's economy annually. It has a combined faculty of 328, a staff of1,150 and 540 part-time and adjunct faculty from other institutions and the community.
The Health Science Center began when TCOM accepted its first students in 1970. The first class of doctors of osteopathic medicine graduated in 1974. TCOM is Texas' only college of osteopathic medicine and one of only 22 in the nation. Roughly 65 percent of the more than 2,900 physicians it has trained practice primary care, such as family medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics/gynecology and pediatrics. Other graduates have chosen specialties from aerospace medicine to heart transplant surgery. TCOM has been ranked in U.S. News & World Report's listing of top medical schools for primary care for six consecutive years. It has also been ranked as one of the Top 20 Medical Schools for Hispanics by Hispanic Business magazine twice.
In 1997, the first students matriculated into TCOM's Physician Assistant Studies Program. The school has graduated 138 physician assistants through the class of 2006. In 2007, the UNT Board of Regents voted to designate the program, making it its own department – the Department of Physician Assistant Studies.
With the establishment of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in 1993, the name of the institution was changed to the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth. Since 1993, the organization has broadened its reach in education, research, patient care and service.
The School of Public Health was established in 1997. In 1999, UNT Health Science Center became a part of the University of North Texas System, and the School of Health Professions was added in 2004.
The Health Science Center is home to the Gibson D. Lewis Health Science Library, where virtually the entire wealth of the world's current medical knowledge is accessible to the public seven days a week through sophisticated information search networks and computer databases.
In keeping with its location in Fort Worth's Cultural District, the campus also boasts several public art gallery areas.
Faculty members of TCOM constitute UNT Health, one of Tarrant County's largest multi-specialty medical group practices. In 2005, the group doubled in size to 160-plus doctors with the addition of the North Texas Medical Group physicians to its faculty. This expansion brought roughly more than a half million patient visits to UNT physicians for everything from lab work and pre-natal visits to geriatric care. The group's doctors practice in 24 medical and surgical specialties and subspecialties, including allergy/immunology, family practice, cardiology, neurology, obstetrics, oncology, orthopedics, psychiatry, sports medicine and neurosurgery.
In keeping with its commitment to research, the Health Science Center has created several institutes and centers for discovery — the Institute for Aging, Alzheimer's Disease Research; the Institute for Cancer Research; the Cardiovascular Research Institute; the North Texas Eye Research Institute; the Physical Medicine Institute; Osteopathic Research Center; Institute for Public Health Research; Texas Institute for Hispanic Health; The Center for Women's Health; Center for Human Identification; and Texas Center for Minority Health, Education, Research and Outreach.
The UNT Center for Human Identification's DNA database is housed at the Health Science Center, and it is one of only three DNA labs in the United States dedicated to identifying the remains of missing persons. The DNA database receives federal funding to analyze DNA samples from both unidentified remains as well as reference samples submitted by family members of missing persons to law enforcement agencies nationwide.
The Health Science Center also serves as home to several National Institutes of Health-funded programs, including the Texas Center for Health Disparities Research. The Health Science Center had a 60.17 percent growth in research funding over a four-year period — the highest of all the health science centers in Texas. For 2006, the Health Science Center came in at 194.75 percent in its federal-to-state-funding ratio.
Through the Office of Clinical Trials, faculty physicians participate in some 20 clinical research projects, seeking improved treatments for such disorders as high blood pressure, migraine, ulcers, arthritis and diabetes.
The Health Science Center also is an active collaborator with TECH Fort Worth, a business incubator designed to create alliances between innovators in the biotechnology field and businesses and investors who can help not only bring the research brought to them to fruition, but also provide valuable economic development opportunities to Fort Worth.
The Health Science Center proudly serves the community through a variety of community and school outreach programs. For example, the Health Science Center founded the annual Hispanic Wellness Fair in 1999, which provided free health screenings and information to more than 16,000 people in 2006, and the annual Cowtown Marathon. The Health Science Center also serves as medical partner for the D/FW Breast Cancer 3-Day. The center participates in 14 state and federally funded programs that bring students and teachers onto campus each summer.
This page last updated Mar 26, 2008
