The University of Mississippi Medical Center is responsible for recruiting participants and conducting examinations at the Jackson Heart Study. Located in Jackson, it is the health sciences campus of the University of Mississippi. The Medical Center opened in 1955, but its beginnings date to 1903 when a two-year medical school was established on the parent campus in Oxford. In that era, certificate graduates went out of state to complete their doctor of medicine degrees.
Finally, in 1950, the Mississippi Legislature -- by a one-vote margin -- enacted a law to create a four-year medical school. On July 1, 1955, the state's new University Medical Center, or UMC as it's commonly called, opened in Jackson, initially as a four-year medical school with medical and graduate students, interns and residents. As it had in Oxford, the School of Medicine offered both medical and graduate degree programs. The campus included a teaching hospital and a library.
The Oxford campus' nursing department moved to the Medical Center in 1956 and it was granted school status in 1958. The School of Health Related Professions (SHRP) was added in 1971 and began offering baccalaureate curricula in 1973. The School of Dentistry was authorized in 1973, and its first students were admitted in 1975. The graduate program was elevated to school status in 2001 and designated the School of Graduate Studies in the Health Sciences.
The Medical Center functions as a separately funded, semi-autonomous unit responsible to the chancellor of the University of Mississippi and, through him, to the constitutional Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning, which governs all eight state institutions of higher learning in Mississippi. The Medical Center's chief executive officer is the vice chancellor for health affairs.
The Medical Center's principal and continuing purpose is to accomplish the interrelated goals of health professional education for Mississippi: to teach in a superior manner the art and science of health care to students of exceptional promise and talent; to provide high quality treatment for all patients using the disciplines and specialties of modern health care; to lead the way to discoveries which will raise the health level of Mississippians and, indeed, all mankind; to foster dedication to life-long learning; to respond to community needs through continuing education and outreach programs that extend beyond the campus; and to recruit and retain the caliber of faculty necessary to meet these goals. The Medical Center fosters and protects an intellectual, emotional and challenging learning environment conducive to educational excellence in the health sciences, productive scientific investigation and exemplary patient care and moves toward the ultimate goals of improved health and well-being for the citizens of Mississippi, the region, the nation and the world.
The ARIC study and the Jackson Heart Study are among UMMC's major federally funded research projects.
Website: http://www.umc.edu/