It is the first department in the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences to relocate downtown as part of UB’s plans to improve health care in Western New York and help revitalize the region’s economy.

The Jan. 19 move to the former M. Wile building on Goodell Street involved family medicine’s 75 faculty and staff. Patient care offices remain on Jefferson Avenue.

Other components of UB’s move downtown include the UB Clinical and Translational Research Center under construction at Goodrich and Ellicott streets, a new medical school, expected to be completed in 2016, and a new Educational Opportunity Center under construction next to the Gateway building.

“With the Department of Family Medicine moving into the UB Gateway building, we are taking another step in relocating the UB medical school to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, in closer proximity to most of Buffalo’s major hospitals and medical research institutions,” says Michael Cain, MD, vice president for health sciences and dean, School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

“The department also now will be closer to the resources of UB’s New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences and the new Clinical and Translational Research Center under construction within the joint UB-Kaleida Health building on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.”

Existing tenants of the UB Gateway include administrative offices of UBMD, the parent organization of the medical practices of the UB medical school, which represents more than 450 UB faculty physicians.

Thomas C. Rosenthal, MD, chair of family medicine, notes that the department’s new home has some distinct advantages. “It’s a modern facility on the downtown campus that will allow for better work flow in the department,” he says.

In addition, the department’s proximity to some of UB’s most sophisticated IT resources is a major asset.

“One of the challenges we face in primary care is that we work with so many different diagnoses and diseases with our patients that it is often difficult to detect patterns,” Rosenthal says.

“In order to more readily see trends, we do a lot of research on large population databases. Being so close to the facilities and expertise of the Center for Computational Research in the UB Center of Excellence is going to provide a real benefit.”

The UB Gateway building is part of the UB Downtown Gateway Complex, which will also include the four-story Educational Opportunity Center building, expected to be completed in the spring of 2013.

The buildings will connect, and the Gateway Complex will form the cornerstone of UB’s downtown campus, providing the Buffalo-Niagara community with greater access to UB’s academic and community programs, strengths and resources.

The overall goal of UB Gateway is to help enhance the quality of life in Buffalo and surrounding communities.

Last month, Millard Fillmore College’s administrative offices also moved into the Gateway building.

Over the next six weeks, additional units moving into the UB Gateway will include the UB School of Management’s Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, which helps local businesses grow and prosper through leadership development and experiential learning, and the Center for Educational Collaboration, a comprehensive joint effort between UB and the Buffalo Public Schools to improve academic outcomes for all the district’s students.