About the UW School of Medicine
The University of Washington School of Medicine was established in 1946. It was the 76th medical school in the country and the first one after World War II. An outstanding faculty was recruited by Dr. Edward Turner, the founding dean, “to test new concepts at a school that was not yet mired in tradition.”
The school has experienced phenomenal growth so that now it is the medical school for five states, called the WWAMI region. WWAMI is an acronym for Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho. This region comprises 27 percent of the total land mass of the United States. The UW School of Medicine has a full time faculty of about 1,800 and a volunteer faculty of approximately 4,400. Since 1993, it has been ranked by U.S. News & World Report as the No. 1 school for teaching primary-care physicians and currently is ranked sixth in the country among research-oriented medical schools. The school is second only to Harvard in National Institutes of Health (NIH) research funding.
Mission Statement
The University of Washington School of Medicine is dedicated to improving the general health and well being of the public. In pursuit of this goal, the school is committed to excellence in biomedical education, research, and health care. The school is dedicated to ethical conduct in all its activities. As the preeminent academic medical center in our region and as a national leader in biomedical research, we place special emphasis on educating and training physicians, scientists, and allied health professionals dedicated to two distinct missions:
- Meeting the health-care needs of our region, especially by recognizing the importance of primary care and providing service to underserved populations;
- Advancing knowledge and assuming leadership in the biomedical sciences and in academic medicine.
The school works with public and private agencies to improve health care and advance knowledge in medicine and related fields of inquiry. It acknowledges a special responsibility to the people in the states of Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho (WWAMI), who have joined with it in a unique regional partnership. The school is committed to building and sustaining a diverse academic community of faculty, staff, fellows, residents and students and to assuring that access to education and training is open to learners from all segments of society, acknowledging a particular responsibility to the diverse populations within our region.
Approved by the Medical School Executive Committee and the dean of the School of Medicine, June 2006