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Dreams taking shape
  
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Houston cardiologist plans to build medical school and research center in Cleveland
By VANESA BRASHIER
Dr. Glover O.L. Johnson has a dream for Cleveland — to establish a biomedical research institute that rivals that best medical schools in the United States. On Saturday at the ZaZa Hotel in Houston, he shared his dream with 350 or so people at a gala to benefit the Southeast Texas Biomedical Research Institute (SETBRI).
Those in attendance were excited to see the unveiling of the design for the first of six planned buildings for the proposed Cleveland facility.
Johnson’s dream appears to be becoming a reality. During his presentation, Johnson also mentioned that he is close to securing a substantial donation that will not only help SETBRI with the construction of the new building and purchase of land, it will provide enough funds to purchase equipment and hire research associates and professors.
As Johnson explained, the facility will not only be a research center; it will be a medical school, hospital and outpatient clinic. The complex will be divided into the following:
• Medical research institute;
• Living quarters for students and a hotel for temporary housing for visitors, teachers and doctors (80 rooms per tower);
• Medical education and teaching complex where the dean and department heads will reside, and will also house an amphitheater and auditorium;
• Hospital with 150 beds;
• Outpatient clinic where minor procedures can be conducted and where former patients can return for check-ups; and
• Multi-purpose medical research building for future expansion.
Johnson explained the need for so many separate buildings, particularly a hospital.
“No good medical school can call itself a research institute without a hospital,” he said.
As for who he intends to work at the medical school, he said that he has talked to “a number of scientists and doctors from prestigious universities” and is now “in the process of recruiting.”
Johnson ultimately would like to have Nobel Prize winners among the staff.
The medical school will be limited to 30 to 50 students in the first years and the goal is that minorities will make up 60 percent of that student population.
Johnson related a story that explained why that philosophy is so important to him. When he attended medical school decades ago, there were only four in the U.S. that accepted blacks. Though that has now changed, Johnson still feels it’s essential to get more minorities into healthcare fields.
“In the U.S., less than 4 percent of all physicians are African-American, less than 3 percent are Hispanic and only 60 doctors are full-blooded Native Americans,” said Johnson, though he did not cite from where these statistics originated.
To help fund the facility further, Johnson is also proposing to the National Institutes of Health a study of 6,000 people in a 13-county zone around the Greater Houston area. Johnson said that the average life expectancy in this 13-county area is 56 years old.
Some of the other medical fields of study at the research institute will be diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, nutrition, HIV/AIDS, high cholesterol, nanotechnology, robotics, space medicine and genomics.
If Johnson is successful in getting the facility built, he expects that it will employ 350 people initially, though that number would increase substantially once all of the components are in place.
Dr. Johnson is a non-invasive cardiologist with 30 years of experience. He practices medicine at Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital, where he was named Doctor of the Year in 2003.
Those in attendance were excited to see the unveiling of the design for the first of six planned buildings for the proposed Cleveland facility.
Johnson’s dream appears to be becoming a reality. During his presentation, Johnson also mentioned that he is close to securing a substantial donation that will not only help SETBRI with the construction of the new building and purchase of land, it will provide enough funds to purchase equipment and hire research associates and professors.
As Johnson explained, the facility will not only be a research center; it will be a medical school, hospital and outpatient clinic. The complex will be divided into the following:
• Medical research institute;
• Living quarters for students and a hotel for temporary housing for visitors, teachers and doctors (80 rooms per tower);
• Medical education and teaching complex where the dean and department heads will reside, and will also house an amphitheater and auditorium;
• Hospital with 150 beds;
• Outpatient clinic where minor procedures can be conducted and where former patients can return for check-ups; and
• Multi-purpose medical research building for future expansion.
Johnson explained the need for so many separate buildings, particularly a hospital.
“No good medical school can call itself a research institute without a hospital,” he said.
As for who he intends to work at the medical school, he said that he has talked to “a number of scientists and doctors from prestigious universities” and is now “in the process of recruiting.”
Johnson ultimately would like to have Nobel Prize winners among the staff.
The medical school will be limited to 30 to 50 students in the first years and the goal is that minorities will make up 60 percent of that student population.
Johnson related a story that explained why that philosophy is so important to him. When he attended medical school decades ago, there were only four in the U.S. that accepted blacks. Though that has now changed, Johnson still feels it’s essential to get more minorities into healthcare fields.
“In the U.S., less than 4 percent of all physicians are African-American, less than 3 percent are Hispanic and only 60 doctors are full-blooded Native Americans,” said Johnson, though he did not cite from where these statistics originated.
To help fund the facility further, Johnson is also proposing to the National Institutes of Health a study of 6,000 people in a 13-county zone around the Greater Houston area. Johnson said that the average life expectancy in this 13-county area is 56 years old.
Some of the other medical fields of study at the research institute will be diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, nutrition, HIV/AIDS, high cholesterol, nanotechnology, robotics, space medicine and genomics.
If Johnson is successful in getting the facility built, he expects that it will employ 350 people initially, though that number would increase substantially once all of the components are in place.
Dr. Johnson is a non-invasive cardiologist with 30 years of experience. He practices medicine at Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital, where he was named Doctor of the Year in 2003.
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kewlkatty wrote on Sep 30, 2008 8:16 PM:
The medical school will be limited to 30 to 50 students in the first years and the goal is that minorities will make up 60 percent of that student population.
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It would be great to have such an institute but I hope the theory of having a minority fill 60% does spill over to the employee part.
It is bad enough to think that my child would be passed over for education because of his ethnicity because they have to fill the 60% quota. Now, I have to worry that if I needed a job and I have the same qualification or better than a minority I wouldn't get it because they have to meet the ethnic quota background.
This is what I took away from this article. "