As we close the year, I want to reflect on one of the Heersink School of Medicine's greatest strengths: our deep, aligned, and enduring partnerships with the UAB Health System, led by CEO Dawn Bulgarella, MSHA, CPA, and the University of Alabama Health Services Foundation (UAHSF) physician practice plan, led by President Cheri Canon, M.D. This triad is the cornerstone of our success as an academic medical center and remains essential to our mission of healing, discovery, and education.
Academic medicine offers a unique value for the people of Alabama and beyond. Our clinicians deliver outstanding care while collaborating with researchers, data scientists, trainees, and community partners to advance new treatments and strengthen the future of medicine. That work is made possible by the alignment between our academic, research, and clinical enterprises. Our shared clinical environment—spanning millions of patient encounters each year—creates unmatched opportunities for clinical trials, data capture, and scientific discovery. The breadth and diversity of the patient population we serve enriches our research portfolio and enhances the impact of every study conducted here.
This partnership is equally transformative for education. Across our four campuses, we train more than 800 medical students and nearly 1,200 residents and fellows. Thanks to the size and quality of our health system and our other partner training sites at Huntsville Hospital Health System and DCH Health System, our learners experience high-acuity care, advanced technologies, and a wide range of clinical settings—from one of the country’s largest public hospitals to community and rural sites. And, as the UAB Health System grows, including through community hospitals such as Baptist Health System in Montgomery and UAB St. Vincent’s and UAB Medical West in the Birmingham area, our training footprint grows with it, preparing future physicians to serve all corners of our state.
Because of the health system’s support, we continue to expand graduate medical education opportunities across our enterprise. The health system funds more than 240 residency positions over the federal residency funding cap—an extraordinary investment that enables us to train more physicians for Alabama. Their commitment also extends to supporting resident and student wellness, an essential component of academic success and professional development.
Our collaboration is fortified by structures that reinforce shared priorities. The Academic Enrichment Fund (AEF), established more than a decade ago, is one of the most important examples. Supported by the health system, UAHSF, and other partners, the AEF enables competitive chair and faculty recruitment and retention, supports research awards and infrastructure, helps fund new centers and institutes, and invests in new buildings and renovations. The AEF, along with our funds-flow model, ensures predictable, equitable investment by the clinical enterprise in our academic excellence. As of 2025, the AEF has provided more than $500 million toward the recruitment of more than 30 chairs and regional deans; the recruitment and retention of more than 400 faculty members; and 64 Pittman Scholar Awards for early-career faculty, 29 multi-investigator grants, 57 second R01 pilot grants, and 126 bridge fund awards.
The HSF’s General Endowment Fund (HSF-GEF) is another powerful asset, supporting state-of-the-art instrumentation purchases, pilot research, medical education initiatives, and other programs that keep our institution at the leading edge. This year, the HSF-GEF awarded $1.5 million through its annual faculty grant program. Since 1996, the HSF-GEF has invested more than $66 million in more than 440 proposals—advancing projects with strong potential to secure extramural funding, improve patient care, enhance research capabilities, and enrich the learning environment—representing a level of investment rarely matched by practice plans nationwide.
Our partnership reached an important milestone with the announcement of the upcoming transition to the EPIC electronic health record platform. While electronic health records are primarily viewed as clinical tools, EPIC represents a profound leap forward for our research enterprise that will enable automated research alerts, simplify participant recruitment, and unify clinical and research data in ways that were previously impossible. The health system’s investment—in EPIC, secure cloud architecture, enterprise data warehouses, and longstanding support for the UAB Center for Clinical and Translational Science—ensures that we remain a national leader in integrating clinical care and discovery.
Perhaps the most defining feature of our affiliation, however, is our shared governance. Through structures like the Joint Operating Leadership Council (JOLC), we move forward together, aligned in strategy, transparent in decision-making, and unified in mission. The JOLC provides critical guidance, informs strategic decisions, and champions efforts to achieve the goals of UAB Medicine. I am proud to chair the JOLC and serve alongside Dawn Bulgarella and Dr. Canon; UAB President Ray Watts, M.D.; UAB Department of Medicine Chair Mark Dransfield, M.D.; UAB Department of Surgery Chair Herb Chen, M.D.; UAB Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology Chair Warner Huh, M.D.; and UAB Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurobiology Chair Adrienne Lahti, M.D. This level of coordination is rare among academic medical centers and is often noted by visitors, who contrast UAB’s collaborative culture with the siloing and friction seen elsewhere.
Our success—past, present, and future—is rooted in this alignment. Together, we have built an academic medical center defined by innovation, excellence, and shared purpose. And together, we will continue to improve the health and well-being of the people we serve.