Health at ASU: Innovative health and healthcare programs and initiatives

ASU creates breakthroughs in health, not just by training health care workers, but by transforming the institutions and systems around them.

The university educates the next generation workforce, cultivates life-changing research, and develops new blueprints and missions for individuals, hospitals, clinics, laboratories, and government institutions that together, impact health and healthcare.

ASU has developed a new model for the American research university, creating an institution that is committed to access, excellence and impact. ASU measures itself by those it includes, not by those it excludes, and pursues research that contributes to the public good. The university assumes responsibility for the economic, social and cultural vitality of the communities that surround it and its approach to the topic of health is comprehensive. Collectively across disciplines, ASU is looking at the subject from the top down, focusing on:

• Examining the systems, institutions and training regimes for the future providers of health care
• Conducting transdisciplinary world-class research that will ultimately lead to effective personalized treatments
• Building templates for the management, interpretation and leveraging of massive amounts of accumulating health-data
• Considering novel wellness and preventative approaches to health
• Tackling the major health challenges such as obesity and type 2 diabetes, as well as others at the intersection of environment, personal choice, and genetic predisposition

ASU is demonstrating a new path in an area previously dominated by those with medical schools. For a decade, the university has been implementing a strategic plan to recruit world-class medical researchers and health policy analysts, forge networks and working alliances with institutions regionally and globally, and transform “siloed” departments into new transdisciplinary schools and initiatives. It is extraordinary that a university without a medical school is playing a leading role in solving health problems and disrupting broken systems. But it is precisely because of this that ASU remains nimble and entrepreneurial, forging clinical partnerships with leading providers, while convening thought leaders to explore new approaches.

Nothing is more illustrative of the New American University’s design aspirations of use-inspired research and societal transformation than changing the dialogue around wellness from lifespan to the notion of "health span." For the people of Arizona, across the nation and globally, ASU leads with an entrepreneurial spirit and the intention to make good health and quality healthcare attainable for all.