A New Year, a Continued Effort to Improve Health for Minnesotans

What a year it has been. Our work together has helped alter the course of the pandemic in this state. We have demonstrated how quickly we can adapt, reconfigure, and reprioritize to meet the needs of our communities. The response across the health sciences in education, research, and clinical care has been phenomenal.

Here’s a look at some of the Office of Academic Clinical Affairs’ major initiatives from 2020:

COVID-19 Response

• Funded 75 Collaborative Outcomes: Visionary Innovation & Discovery (CO:VID) grants for small-scale research projects leading to new knowledge of COVID-19 and solving the pandemic’s unique supply chain and medical supplies challenges, including the development of the low-cost ventilator, “Coventor,” and its open source release to the world.
• Established the National Resource Center for Refugees, Immigrants, and Migrants that focuses on COVID-19 prevention, control and mitigation.

Improving Health Equity

• Interprofessional Mobile Health Initiative created in June to address health care disparities and resulting poor health outcomes occurring in communities with inadequate access to care.
• Minnesota Mobile Resuscitation Consortium (MMRC) was 100% effective in cannulation for out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrests and the MMRC SUV response team has continued to serve cardiac arrest patients and expand the number of centers where cannulation services are provided.
• Rural Health Initiative launched to bring together University of Minnesota and communities to advance health, and improve outcomes in rural Minnesota.

Clinical Education and Training & Interprofessional Collaboration

• Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain established to bring together University experts in developmental brain research and child health to understand, prevent, diagnose and treat neurodevelopmental disorders in early childhood and adolescence.
• Health Sciences Education Center (HSEC), one of the most comprehensive interprofessional education facilities in the country, opened to provide a unifying space for all our health sciences.
• Hands-on clinical training was adapted to remote learning, enabling our learners to remain engaged and move forward in their education.
• Awarded second round BOLD Ideas grants to create interdisciplinary collaborations tackling complex issues affecting community and individual health.

The New Year will bring new opportunities to further the University’s clinical mission together. I wish you good health and look forward to the day we can be together again.