TTUHSC training future health care providers at Dallas campus
Mar. 26—Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC) recently hosted a Dallas Ribbon Cutting and Celebration on March 20.
The TTUHSC Dallas campus is home to the Jerry H. Hodge School of Pharmacy and the Laura W. Bush Institute for Women's Health and provides resources for multiple programs within the School of Nursing.
TTUHSC President Lori Rice-Spearman said the university's presence in the Metroplex comes as a response to students who value a degree from TTUHSC's prestigious programs. By offering degrees here, students can receive the best in the nation's health care education without leaving the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
"Our goal for our Metroplex location is to make our nationally-recognized academic instruction accessible in order to help address the shortage of healthcare professionals," Rice-Spearman said in a news release. "We want to continue building our community partnerships and seek to build new ones where we can work together to identify innovative solutions to meet health care needs."
Rice-Spearman said TTUHSC has 8,726 alumni in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, which is approximately 21% of all TTUHSC alumni. TTUHSC supports the Dallas economy contributing $36.4 million annually and sustaining about 150 jobs statewide from university-related operations at the campus.
The Jerry H. Hodge School of Pharmacy was the first TTUHSC school established in Dallas. The school's Dallas and Lubbock campuses opened in 1999 for third- and fourth-year students three years after the school opened in Amarillo. At that time, students began in Amarillo and then transitioned to either Dallas or Lubbock for their third and fourth years because there was such a need for pharmacists in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
In 2018, the Dallas campus accepted its first four-year class.
More than 250 pharmacy students come from the Dallas-Fort Worth campus. The TTUHSC pharmacy school offers a curricular distinction for all pharmacy graduates to earn a recognition of a Concentration in Special Populations, including a required training in geriatrics, pediatrics and rural health/underserved community care. The training uniquely prepares pharmacy students to meet the health care needs of diverse patients in both rural and urban communities. Pharmacy students have the opportunity to complete degrees of Pharm, MBA and or PharmD/MPH within four years of training.
In addition to its educational priorities, the pharmacy school supports significant research programs in clinical pharmacology and experimental therapeutics; and real-world evidence on medication use with about 1,719 square feet of dedicated laboratory research space on the Dallas campus, the release said.
Outside of academic offerings, the Jerry H. Hodge School of Pharmacy faculty and pharmacy residents work collaboratively with their colleagues across the enterprise to provide patient care through various contracts with external health care institutions, community pharmacies, nursing homes and clinics including patient care services at the North Texas VA Healthcare System, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Senior Care, Access TeleCare and at an underserved clinic.
