CSU, St. Vincent collaborate to enhance medical hub

Cleveland State University and St. Vincent Charity Medical Center announced earlier this October their collaboration to attempt the expansion on the existing academic and medical hub located in Campus District.

Campus District is home to not only both institutions but to other schools such as Cuyahoga County Community College and holds an engaged lifestyle in the urban community for students and citizens of Cleveland.

Founded in 1865 to care for people within the city, St. Vincent grew to become the leading help for Cleveland in health services and resources, today. The charity center has reached medical excellence in three key clinical areas of spine and orthopedics, bariatrics and behavioral health.

For students on the brink of receiving their degree from a university located in an area that is home to urban health care and many other opportunities, they are already given the chance to grow themselves and work in the community.

Thom Olmstead, director of university partnership collaboration at St. Vincent, said the collaboration was made with Cleveland State so the two can influence the city and create more opportunity for them as well as the area, overall. He believes that working together with students in different schools on campus will do great things for the city.

“First off, our goal with this collaboration is to develop a strategic alliance between both institutions and build a foundation between the school and center," Olmstead said. "With this foundation we want to create an academic medical campus. Secondly, we want to build an engagement that mainly focuses on issues of addiction, like the opium epidemic, for example.”

St. Vincent is working with students who are part of Cleveland State’s school of health science, engineering, law and urban affairs to use their field of practice to make this collaboration possible.

Students and advisors of Cleveland State are participating with the center to perform research on issues that occur in the Cleveland area that cover the center’s three clinical areas of health. St. Vincent provides students from Cleveland State with tools, labs, and support in the collaboration and can receive a possible internship from the project, as well.

Dr. Edgar Jackson, co-chair of the collaboration and director of Urban Health Initiatives and co-director of the neo-med partnership at Cleveland State, said he hopes that this collaboration with the center will form a better relationship between the two to keep the foundation going to better the urban community.

“This experience will provide real world training for the students participating in our research and goal to help make Cleveland grow,” Jackson said. “This practice will create an easier transition for students as well coming from a school practice into an actual job. This generation can help revitalize our urban community and create more opportunity in the area.”

After raising money together for the $.5-million project, according back to Olmstead, students who are in doctoral programs, for example, are able to get a hands-on experience with opportunities such as working in clinical labs. St. Vincent has also engaged with schools like Kent State University in order to give students a better learning experience in their field of study.

“We work with universities to give students a greater learning experience and to get them involved in their communities early on,” said Olmstead. “The purpose of coming together is to give students an opportunity to improve in the medical field so they can create a better foundation for the future.”