Welcome to UCSD Health Sciences. This is a dynamic, creative environment, where science and medicine converge to advance human health. Every day in our laboratories, clinics and hospitals, progress is made to benefit our patients and our community.

There has never been such an exhilarating and challenging time to be in the field of health care and biomedical research. The pace of progress is rapid, and the sophisticated tools available to physicians and scientists today far surpass anything that could have been predicted only a few decades ago.

UCSD Health Sciences unites physicians and researchers with the common goals of improving our understanding of health and disease, and developing more effective diagnostic methods and treatments. Our hospitals and clinics provide access to the most advanced care available anywhere in the world, and medical and pharmacy students and trainees are prepared to be leaders in 21st century health care.

We would like to give you a sense of what is special about UCSD Health Sciences, and how we are undertaking a transformation that will better enable us to create the future of health care. First, let me set the stage:

The UCSD School of Medicine admitted its first class of students in 1968. Since then, our School has grown in stature and reputation. In 2002, we admitted the first class to our new School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, the first of its kind in Southern California. Our UCSD Healthcare system has grown to encompass two hospitals and numerous outpatient sites. We offer a number of regional programs that provide specialized care for the San Diego community and beyond, serving patients from around the country and the world. And we provide access to hundreds of clinical trials that offer the newest, most promising therapies.

From the inception of the medical school, and now the pharmacy school, we have sought faculty with broad interests and training, and we’ve encouraged cross appointments with the campus and our neighboring research institutions to keep them stimulated and engaged. The extent to which this occurs at UCSD is not found in any other medical school in this country.

Education is at the center of all of our activities. Experience has taught us that there is tremendous value in giving our students and trainees access to the full breadth of resources available at UCSD and in our community, and the encouragement and mentoring to follow their imaginations beyond traditional coursework and career paths.

Because of its youth, UCSD has always embraced non-traditional approaches. This open-minded attitude has allowed us to develop an exciting, new cross-disciplinary approach for education, research and patient care. Students, scientists, physicians, and clinicians, working across academic boundaries, fuel sparks of discovery where breakthroughs happen. Science and medicine advance.

Our goals are ambitious, but we believe our patients and our public have come to expect us to invent the future, rather than wait for a road map. We are moving forward to develop new methods to prevent, treat and cure disease. We are moving forward to produce the leaders who will change the course of health care. We need your support to see this vision through.

I feel privileged to be part of this university at this time of extraordinary innovation, growth and promise. I hope you will become as enthused as I am about the possibilities, and that you will join us as we forge the new frontiers in medicine, and improve health care for patients today and generations to come.

Edward W. Holmes, M.D