History

UMass Medical School and its health care consulting division, Commonwealth Medicine, have a longstanding commitment to public service. The state’s only public medical school, UMass Medical School was founded in 1962 to provide affordable medical education for state residents and to increase the numbers of primary care physicians in underserved areas. UMass Medical School consistently ranks among the top 10 medical schools in the country in primary care education.

Today the Medical School, one of the five campuses of the University of Massachusetts, has established a reputation as a world-class research institution, attracting more than $175 million in research funding annually. In October 2006, UMMS’ Craig Mello, Ph.D., and his Stanford University colleague Andrew Fire, Ph.D., were awarded the Nobel Prize for their groundbreaking research on RNAi. Our collaborations with our clinical partner, UMass Memorial Health Care, the largest health care system in Central and Western Massachusetts, have also generated cutting-edge programs, research, and treatments.

To carry out the Medical School’s public service mission, pioneering faculty and staff sought opportunities to have a direct and profound impact on the communities of Massachusetts. They reached beyond the traditional boundaries of academia to establish research initiatives, training programs, and clinical services focusing on the public sector.

This approach — instrumental in creating our groundbreaking programs in public sector financing, clinical training, and policy research — met with remarkable success. After initially operating independently of one another, these individual programs were brought under a single organizational umbrella in 1999, and UMass Medical School’s Commonwealth Medicine was formed to serve as a health care consulting division.

The Commonwealth Medicine division grew quickly and continues to expand with growing demand for expertise in specialized populations and for high-quality clinical services. Today, Commonwealth Medicine operates dozens of individual programs and centers, serving public sector agencies and nonprofit clients in 20 states, as well as internationally. While our programs are diverse in scope and function, all are united under Commonwealth Medicine’s mission to serve vulnerable populations by applying our unparalleled skills and experience to the challenge of raising the quality of health care programs.