It is amazing that 5 major health schools are in shared buildings with shared resources on one campus: medical, dental, nursing, pharmacy, public health. I believe we may be the ONLY campus with such shared facilities and schools in one place! The cross-pollination of ideas between these schools, their faculty and students and projects is fertile and exciting. Add the CU Innovations unit that pulls in the healthy startup community in Colorado, and see what sprouts up! (Watch this space for some outcomes of this work.)
The history of Anschutz Medical Campus (named after Phil Anschutz, tycoon with history in oil, railroads, telecom) goes back to Fitzsimons Army Hospital from 1927, a World War I recuperation hospital. Back then Building 500 was the main hospital (see center of this interactive map).
We’ve come a long way from a square mile of military marching fields with a solo hospital in the midst, to being Eisenhower’s recuperation hospital in 1995, and now we are a square mile of a medical campus with over 30,000 employees and 3 major medical centers (UCHealth, Childrens Hospital Colorado, and Denver VA Medical Center).
