Transforming Community Focus of Jacobs School Efforts

By Dirk Hoffman

“I really want to focus on community — the community we have in the room, our regional community and our national community,” she said. “And the way that the University at Buffalo not only gives back to the community, but is really focused on having an impact in the community.”

Brashear, UB’s vice president for health sciences and dean of the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, reiterated her vision of advancing the Jacobs School into the nation’s Top 25 public schools of medicine, while transforming the health of Western New York.

“It’s about taking our educational, research and clinical missions and our commitment to health equity and diversity, with our nationally recognized expertise in artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives here at UB and really putting all that together so that we can have an impact,” she said.

Brashear highlighted UB’s historic hiring initiative, noting the Jacobs School has welcomed 135 new faculty members, including 79 new clinicians, since July 2023.

“That is a remarkable number and I want to thank everyone who has been involved in these hirings, particularly the department chairs who really carried all of the work in finding great candidates and bringing them to UB,” she said.

Brashear also noted a number of new leaders who have been appointed at the Jacobs School, including four new department chairs and two new senior associate deans, and thanked them for “bringing experience and energy to the school.”

“All of us are here for different reasons,” Brashear said. “We all bring some talents and strengths, but when we combine all of our strengths in academic medicine, we can truly make a difference in impacting the health of the community.”

Brashear made note of the Jacobs School’s strategic plan, first implemented in 2023, and said it is “a living, breathing document that is designed to set the guideposts for us as we live into the future.”

“I want to go through some of the highlights of each of the plan’s pillars of education, research, clinical care, and always with an eye toward diversity.”

Brashear said the Jacobs School is committed to education across the continuum, noting some of the work of Jennifer A. Surtees, PhD, professor of biochemistry, and associate dean for undergraduate education and STEM outreach.

“Dr. Surtees is going into high schools to work with students, teaching them things like how to extract DNA,” she said.

“By talking to and teaching high school students, we want to create pathways where students end up seeing themselves at UB, going to medical school or creating a different path into one of our amazing health sciences schools,” Brashear added. “Bringing in that new talent and leaning into our commitment to the community is one of our core values.”

Brashear noted the Jacobs School Class of 2024 consisted of 169 medical students, 209 biomedical sciences baccalaureate students, 76 master’s students and 35 PhD students.

Brashear pointed out that 15 of the doctoral students and eight of the master’s students were enrolled in Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center’s graduate programs, highlighting the Jacobs School’s “significant partnership with Roswell.”

“We also have a significant number of students who come from backgrounds that are underrepresented in medicine, and first-generation college students, and I think that is incredibly important,” she added.

In the U.S. News & World Report’s rankings, the Jacobs School is tied for 18th among the most diverse public medical schools in the country. Its overall ranking among all schools is 29th.

“The number of our students from diverse backgrounds in medicine has significantly increased over time and this is due to the tireless work of our admissions programs and the connections we have with UB and other colleges in the region,” Brashear said. “This is something we are really committed to and this is one of the things the university has become known for, and the Jacobs School is particularly known for.”

The Jacobs School’s new Well Beyond curriculum for medical students launched in July and Brashear noted it was a massive undertaking led by Lisa Jane Jacobsen, MD; Alan J. Lesse, MD; and Jennifer A. Meka, PhD.

“I want to thank them for their amazing work. This curriculum really sets the stage for training the next generation.”

Brashear said, “it takes an entire village to do this,” noting the numerous curriculum directors and faculty coaches involved in the process.

“This is going to put us in good stead as we seek to grow the number of doctors who come and train and stay in Buffalo.”

UB wants to continue to grow and Brashear noted the Jacobs School is doing its part — the number of first-year undergraduates enrolled is up 12% and the number of undergraduate transfers is up 40%.

Brashear also noted the Jacobs School’s graduate medical education program boasts more than 810 residents and fellows. UB’s training program is in the top 10 percent in the country in terms of size and its residents and fellows train at 31 clinical sites across Western New York.

The Jacobs School has made “amazing strides” in research, Brashear said, and is committed to focusing on its strengths in areas such as healthy aging, addiction, neuroscience and immunology.

Brashear made note of New York State’s Empire AI consortium, which includes the creation of a state-of-the-art artificial intelligence computing center on UB’s campus.

“We have a great opportunity to utilize those resources that will be available to UB with the $475 million commitment to the public-private partnership and to change the way we do research and change the way we address some of society’s most pressing problems,” she said.

Brashear also gave a “shoutout” to Jill Szczesek, PhD, associate vice president, health sciences research administration and finance, for her work in creating a cadence of symposiums, followed by seed funding opportunities and follow-up symposiums.

“Part of this is laying the groundwork so we are training the next generation of researchers, but also providing them with resources so they can work on large and complex problems,” she said.

Four researchers in the Jacobs School, UB’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and the College of Arts & Sciences each received $50,000 in seed funding for AI-driven research projects in conjunction with a recent Health and AI symposium at the Jacobs School that featured David Rhew, MD, global chief medical officer for Microsoft.

“As a result of that visit, Dr. Rhew is now speaking to the SUNY health sciences retreat in Albany on Nov. 20, so we are deepening that relationship with SUNY, the AI world and with Microsoft as well,” she said.

The Office of the Vice President for Health Sciences also provided $250,000 in seed funding to five Jacobs School researchers for healthy aging initiatives in partnership with an aging symposium that featured Greg Olsen, MSW, the acting director of the New York State Office for the Aging.

“Our goal is to make sure we are investing not only in basic science, but also investing in things like home-based interventions for minority adults,” Brashear said “We want to make sure we are actually developing meaningful research projects that are going to change the trajectory of the health of our patients.”

Brashear also highlighted a number of major research awards, all totaling at least $3 million in funding, that were awarded to Jacobs School researchers.

“The Jacobs School is a major driver of research at UB,” she said, noting 32% of all research proposals submitted at UB were from the Jacobs School and 56% of proposals were from UB’s health sciences schools.

The Jacobs School had over $77 million in research expenditures in the past year, an increase of 14% from the previous year.

Brashear also made note of plans for the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute to join UB in the near future.

“I’m excited the institute will be a part of UB. I think it’s going to be transformative for our researchers.”

On the clinical side, Brashear, who also serves as president and CEO of UBMD, said she was proud to announce that UBMD Physicians’ Group, the medical school’s practice plan, has been recognized by Buffalo Business First as the 2024 Top Health Care Company.

“UBMD is the largest multispecialty group in Western New York. It has 631 providers who also serve as faculty in our school, while taking care of patients in our community,” she said.

“When you go into any of our hospital partners, you are most likely going to encounter a UB physician.”

The Jacobs School is also committed to expanding scholarship funding opportunities, especially for those interested in primary care, Brashear said.

“We are in a football community here; we get it. All patients need a quarterback,” she said. “All patients need someone to help them manage the specialists and manage their medicine. The best place for the patient is at home with their family and they need a primary care physician.”

Brashear said the Jacobs School continues to work on building a more equitable community and noted events such as the Igniting Hope Conference, the Department of Surgery’s Beyond the Knife endowed lecture series, the creation of UB’s Community Health Equity Research Institute and more recently, the establishment of an Erie County Office of Health Equity.

One of the most recent developments in this area is UB being awarded a highly competitive, $3.6 million grant from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities to train early-career faculty members to address health inequities in Western New York.

“This puts UB at the forefront of what medical schools are doing in the country.”

Brashear said efforts also continue to diversify the faculty at the Jacobs School and “thanked chairs and other leaders who have taken up the charge to diversify our school.”

She also paused to reflect on the racially motivated shooting that occurred on May 14, 2022, at the Tops Friendly Supermarket, a few miles from the Jacobs School building.

In the aftermath, Brashear said the Jacobs School formed a valuable partnership with the Michigan State University community, which suffered its own campus shooting in February 2023.

“The Michigan State College of Human Medicine dean and I met at an AAMC meeting right after the shooting in East Lansing and we agreed we needed to do something,” she said.

The result was the inaugural Remembrance Conference held in East Lansing, Michigan, with leaders from over 10 medical schools in attendence this past February. UB will host the next conference on June 6-8, 2025.

“It is designed to call out gun violence as a public health issue and educate our teams around what they can do to impact the epidemic of gun violence,” Brashear said.

UB’s Boldly Buffalo fundraising campaign raised $1.3 billion and $377 million of that total came from the Jacobs School, Brashear said.

“We are leading in research and we are leading in philanthropic contributions,” she said. “We are here to use all the tools available to transform the health of WNY. We are a medical school and that is what medical schools do — they improve health.”

“It’s been an amazing year and we have a lot to be excited about,” Brashear added. “Stay tuned, there will be more!”

The address took place Oct. 29 in the Ronald I. Dozoretz, MD ’62 Auditorium at the Jacobs School building.