Good Medicine for Camden, NJ
Cooper University's Health Science Campus Will Revitalize City
Jun 24, 2009
One institution in a depressed area can sometimes make all the difference. For Camden, NJ, which has held the national distinction of being America's "most dangerous city" and home to many of the state's poorest children, Cooper University Hospital is that institution.
Cooper, which has endured since its founding in 1887, is launching a revitalization worthy of replicating in similarly distressed areas.The decaying vistas a generation ago (“Who Would Want to Live Here?” Time, 1992) have been replaced by hope because of Cooper's initiatives. Its glimmering state-of-the-art health care pavilion, opened in 2008, is a harbinger. Cooper University's 21st Century Health Sciences Campus will provide care for its patients, a medical school and multiple opportunities for collaborative ventures with its neighbors as well as the biotech industry in New Jersey.
Medical Schools Bring Positive Change
Cooper's Health Science Campus, including a four-year medical school, will be a pivotal force in educating physicians, improving access to health care, providing advanced research capability and stimulating unprecedented economic development. Across the nation, from Florida to Minnesota to California, medical schools have brought positive change to their environs. There is abundant support among experts in medicine and economic development for this initiative.
At a glance:
- The American Medical Association, Council on Graduate Medical Education, Association of American Medical Colleges, College of Physicians and the U.S. Bureau of Health Physicians has addressed the projected national shortage of physicians by 2020.
- Quality of care will suffer without a sufficient number of physicians whose training is current with research and technology and informed by a culturally sensitive curriculum.
- Access to health care in the immediate vicinity will improve. Currently, one in every two of Camden's residents – 38,519 in 2003 - are treated in an emergency room at least once annually, most with conditions that could be treated by a primary care practice, and most "tend" to have insurance, reports the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers. Through the Health Science Campus and its medical school, impoverished citizens in Camden would receive community-based health care.
- Advanced research capability will attract federal funding, e.g., the National Institute of Health and the Center for Disease Control. This is an ideal fit with New Jersey's biotech presence.
Economic Growth in the Clusters
Cooper University Hospital – with its "21st Century Health Science Campus – will be an essential institution in what Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter calls "clusters." Cooper's Health Science Campus would be crucial to the health sciences cluster in Camden, as key to a "geographic concentrations of interconnected companies, specialized suppliers, service providers, firms in related industries, and associated institutions (for example, universities, standards agencies, and trade associations) in particular fields that compete but also cooperate.
Critical masses of unusual competitive success in particular business areas, clusters are a striking feature of virtually every national, regional, state, and even metropolitan economy, especially those of more economically advanced nations." This is not a radical idea; it is a practical solution for a distressed city.
Notably, in "Nothing Left to Lose: Only Radical Strategies Can Help America’s Most Distressed Cities" (Edward W. Hill and Jeremy Novak, Brookings Institution, 2000), it was posited that "cities can relieve poverty only by creating opportunity". Cooper University's Health Science Campus will create opportunity through its programs and services and in attracting other enterprises.
Jobs Creation
As M. Porter also offered about inner cities, revitalizing them is not just a "social fairness thing" – it's good for opening the labor force and the land that is being wasted. Job creation is an inevitable benefit of the Cooper Health Sciences Campus.
Health care is one of the last growing fields in the nation. Job opportunities would be created through the presence of the formidable Health Science Campus AND the anticipated growth of interconnected companies. As part of a reliable infrastructure, job-training programs would also be strengthened. Prior job training programs, such as one funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for community health workers, atrophied in part because of the lack of a substantial entity that the Health Science Campus promises to deliver.
Alternatives for Camden, New Jersey
Without a four-year medical school at Cooper’s site, training of physicians and allied professions in one of the only growing fields remaining – health care – would thrive in other locales – not where it's needed in New Jersey.
Without Cooper's 21st Century Health Science Campus, billions of dollars would be lost in medical care when patients leave New Jersey, and a vision for the city would vanish across the river.
And that's not "good medicine."
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