In the most recent government ranking of research grants to medical schools, the University of Arizona came in at 63rd out of 128 schools.
The UA is not part of a consortium — although it applied to be — of 62 medical research institutions in 31 states and the District of Columbia that is working to speed research discoveries into better health through the national Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) program.
That’s not good enough for Dr. Joe G.N. “Skip” Garcia, an extroverted Texas-born physician-scientist with big ideas and ambitions for the UA.
“We are not functioning at the level we need to be at,” said Garcia, who is a leading authority on the genetics of lung disease. “If you look at the leadership historically of this place, it has not been in sync. It has not been synergistic. It has not even been strategic.”
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As the university’s senior vice president of health sciences, Garcia is charged with integrating undergraduate and graduate research at the Arizona Health Sciences Center colleges, which include the UA College of Medicine-Tucson; UA College of Medicine-Phoenix; UA College of Pharmacy; UA College of Nursing; and the UA Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health.
Hired in September from the University of Illinois at Chicago at one of the UA’s highest salaries — $810,000 — Garcia is expected to infuse the university with millions of dollars in research grants. He also intends to build up the UA as a leader in genetic research and as an economic engine for the state.
“I am a seasoned academician,” Garcia said. “Everywhere I’ve been I’ve taken us from mediocresville to the top ...
“We have a lot of work to do here. You track where we are next year and the year after and it’s going to be a pretty steep climb, I bet.”
The same month that Garcia arrived in Tucson, Dr. Rainer Gruessner, a renowned transplant surgeon and head of the UA department of surgery, was suspended in the midst of a dispute with the administration. He later filed a lawsuit that said Dr. Steve Goldschmid, the dean of the medical school, had retaliated against him because he was critical of Goldschmid’s leadership abilities.
In January, UA officials announced that Goldschmid would be leaving the dean’s post and taking a new vice president position. Garcia, in addition to his other duties, is interim dean of the medical school until a new one is hired.
Gruessner’s case against the university, plus a whistleblower complaint, are ongoing. The transplant program has suffered, and the hospital’s world-famous heart transplant program is on hiatus.
Another surgeon was suspended in late January. Dr. Robert Poston says he was maligned by peers who didn’t like the cost-saving and minimally invasive robotic cardiac surgery he offered to patients. Poston also has pending legal action against the UA, and for now the hospital is not performing minimally invasive cardiac bypass surgeries.
Adding to the challenges facing Garcia, four key health leadership positions at the UA are vacant — Cancer Center director, department of medicine director, medical school dean and department of surgery chair. While Gruessner is trying to get his job back, UA officials have launched a national search for a new surgery leader.
The Star sat down with Garcia recently to talk about his vision for health sciences at the university. Here is an excerpt from the conversation:
Are you worried about filling four top health science jobs that don’t have permanent leaders?
The department of medicine search is a little bit farther behind than the department of surgery but the first cut of candidates there, great folks. So I think it is an exciting time in the health sciences center.
We have fabulous candidates that have come through here from top-notch places — University of Chicago and Duke and Stanford, and Emory and the University of Wisconsin, I am sure there are places I’m missing. I’ve been really impressed with the quality of our candidates.
We have a plan. It’s challenging because the state budgeting and resources for the university are challenging, as you know, federal funding is pretty flat. But having said that, I think we’re going to have a lot of success in addressing things like health disparities in our area, and building the pipeline for the next generation of biomedical workers and health-care workers.
What about a new Cancer Center director?
I’d say by June 1 we’ll have an announcement.
Do you feel like you need to repair relations with the community, given the situation with Dr. Gruessner and Dr. Poston?
Those are single individuals. I wouldn’t view that as being an impaired relationship with the community, based on a couple of individuals. The honest answer here is, when you look at things with these two individuals and what is happening with surgery, this is ubiquitous. Every academic medical center goes through all of this stuff with great regularity. I’m old, so I’ve had the experience of being at a number of good institutions. ... This is so normal.
How do you think our hospital and medical school fare compared with the others you have seen? Are you impressed?
I am impressed that we have the capacity to really improve here. We’re not where we should be for an American Association of Universities academic medical center. We are a very strong research university. And our health center, academic health center, isn’t at a level we’d expect. But we have a lot of talent here, very talented, committed people and we are going to get the kind of national recognition we deserve for being one of the premiere academic medical centers in the country.
What are places that are really good, that we could strive to be like?
Penn, Johns Hopkins, University of California-San Francisco, to name a few.
What is the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) and why is it important?
In 2005 or so the NIH (National Institutes of Health) launched this grant that was designed to transform clinical research at academic health centers. And the reason for this is that, historically, clinical research was not valued as much as basic research. So if you are doing patient clinical trials, taking patient samples and studying those samples, that wasn’t valued as much as cloning genes or things like that.
The idea of this grant is to make sure that clinical research is valued. Let’s get institutions thinking about training the next generation of clinical researchers. Let’s really transform these institutions to do clinical research.
They’ve had successive competitions for these awards and 60 institutions right now have this award now and we don’t. We’ve tried. The last time we tried was 2010. We’re going to try very hard on this next round and I wouldn’t bet against us, let’s put it that way.
Why did you come here? Was it a difficult decision?
I’m a Latino. I’m passionate about academics. I’m passionate about physician-scientist training. I’m passionate about health disparities and this state is awash in staggering health disparities.
In this state, 35 percent of the population is Latino. There are a lot of opportunities for inspiring Latinos and Native Americans, too, to careers in science and in health, pharmacy and nursing.
Staggering health disparities in a country with as much wealth as we have is embarrassing. To me, it’s very sad.
No one has figured out the models to really deliver care to at-risk populations. If we’re the folks that figure that stuff out, we’ll be best in show.
