 
Boston
University Medical Center (BUMC), located in the South End of Boston,
consolidates the resources and activities of the School of Medicine,
the School of Public Health, the Goldman School of Dental Medicine,
Boston Medical Center, and a number of research institutes and core
facilities.
The
Boston Medical Center, the nonprofit institution created by the
1996 merger of the BUMC Hospital and Boston City Hospital, is dedicated
to the mission of serving all patients regardless of their ability
to pay. Even before the merger, the School of Medicine budgeted
more than $8 million annually to help support the salaries of staff
at the hospitals, thereby ensuring the only source of medical care
for many of Boston's uninsured residents. Financial problems were
threatening the very existence of Boston City Hospital; yet closing
it would have cost $17 million annually, plus the loss of more than
two thousand jobs.
To
support the merger, Boston University provides $18 million in capital
assistance and $7.2 million as an annual operating contribution.
This agreement preserves jobs and presents the lowest cost option
for the city, in a medical climate of rampant hospital closures
and cutbacks.
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Physicians
and medical students have been making house calls to seniors
in the city's neighborhoods since 1875.
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Boston
Medical Center provides a full range of medical services to residents
of Boston and New England. In FY 1999, Boston Medical Center provided
approximately $160 million in free care. Of this amount, $44 million
was not reimbursed. In addition, one of every two uninsured patients
who seek medical care in Boston receives it at Boston Medical Center.
In
FY 1999, more than 100,000 patients without health insurance came
to Boston Medical Center or one of its affiliated health centers.
A
network of centers and institutes links basic scientists with clinical
investigators to stimulate research and discovery, and to introduce
new and improved therapies for cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases,
cancer, arthritis, and sexually transmitted diseases.
The
research of the faculty, together with the recent addition of residential,
research, and retail space, has transformed the medical campus into
a scientific village working on the health problems of urban populations.
Boston
University Medical Center strives to improve the health of the community
by developing initiatives and strengthening existing community programs.
Reach Out and Read (ROAR), developed in the Department
of Pediatrics, provides books to children to promote literacy. The
Casey Foundation supports the establishment of similar programs throughout
the country.
Area
schoolteachers receive support and stimulation through curriculum
enrichment centers such as the African Studies Center, whose
Outreach Program disseminates information to elementary and
secondary school teachers as well as to journalists and museum specialists.
The
University provides school systems with many professional, staff,
and parent development options. The Boston Leadership Academy
has offered seminars that develop skills in leadership, setting
goals, and planning programs to school teams composed of teachers
and administrators. Since 1989, the Academy has provided training
to those involved with the Boston Public Schools as part of a program
in management and decision-making.
In
a special laboratory on the medical campus, high school students
and their teachers learn the new science of biotechnology in CityLab.
This innovative learning laboratory has become a regional resource
for public schools that lack the equipment and expertise to train
students in modern science and biotechnology. Since 1998, CityLab's
new forty-foot mobile unit has offered hands-on investigative laboratory
experiences to more than three thousand students and teachers within
a fifty-mile radius of Boston.
As
part of a national initiative to increase the number of minority
physicians, the School of Medicine has an agreement with a consortium
of historically black colleges and universities to ease the transition
to medical school for talented students. The School's science education
programs introduce elementary and secondary school students to careers
in math and science. These include programs at the Health Careers
Academy at Boston and Dorchester High Schools, and also a Junior
National Health Service Corps program at the South Cove Community
Health Center.
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