The Academic Health Center (AHC), consists of the colleges of medicine, nursing, pharmacy and allied health sciences, Hoxworth Blood Center and the programs and institutes at the Reading Campus. The AHC also has strong partnerships and affiliations with UC Health (University Hospital and University of Cincinnati Physicians), Christ Hospital, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Department of Veteran Affairs Medical Center, Jewish Hospital, Lindner Center of HOPE, Mayfield Clinic, Shriners Hospitals for Children-Cincinnati, UC Health Surgical Hospital and West Chester Hospital.
As a major source of medical care in Greater Cincinnati, the center has a distinguished reputation for training prominent health care professionals and providing leading-edge research and patient care.
The academic health center concept - one organization that includes a medical school, one or more teaching hospitals and other health professional colleges - originated with frontier physician Daniel Drake, who in 1819 founded the Medical College of Ohio, precursor of the UC College of Medicine.
Drake, however, foresaw not just a free-standing medical school, but an integrated medical school system and teaching hospital. From the start, the College of Medicine, the institution that eventually evolved into University Hospital, and a growing number of affiliates have worked closely together in the spirit that Drake envisioned.
Today, the Academic Health Center has a strong national reputation for biomedical research, which includes development of the first live, attenuated polio vaccine by Albert Sabin, MD, who worked on the project at both UC and the affiliated Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, as well as definitive studies of the health effects of lead in children and development of the popular antihistamine Benadryl by George Rieveschl, PhD, who was working in the UC chemistry department during the time of his discovery.
UC also started the first emergency medicine and physical medicine and rehabilitation residency programs in the United States, and was also one of the first medical schools in the country to introduce a family practice residency program, pioneering the return of the "family doctor" to U.S. health-care delivery.
- Academic Health Center Inventions & Firsts
First bachelor's degree program in nursing
First medical school west of the Alleghenies
First pharmacy school west of the Alleghenies
First emergency medicine residency program
First medical laser laboratory in the country
Developed the Heart-Lung machine
Invented the Clark Oxygen electrode
Developed the Fogarty Heart Catheter
First Effective Antihistamine "Benadryl" - George Rieveschl, MD
First Oral Polio Vaccine - Albert Sabin, MD
