Essentia Health applauds City of Duluth resolution supporting downtown medical school

Essentia Health commends Duluth City Councilor Arik Forsman for advancing a resolution in support of the University of Minnesota Medical School, Duluth Campus.   

This resolution follows two recent positive announcements by the University of Minnesota regarding the the University of Minnesota Medical School, Duluth Campus. In September, the university reported that it will transition from a two-year program to a four-year program at the medical school in Duluth. University officials also announced earlier this month that as part of a decades-long commitment to rural health and tribal communities, they are looking to advance a request for a new, expanded medical school at their Board of Regents meeting this week.

In addition to enhancing the important mission of training rural providers, a new medical school provides an exciting and historic revitalization opportunity for downtown Duluth. Essentia has agreed to make the site of our former St. Mary’s Medical Center available to the university at no cost. A new medical school campus on the Fourth Street corridor has the opportunity to result in new student and professional housing, retail, restaurants, childcare and more.

At Essentia, we share the University of Minnesota’s passion for training Native American and rural providers and have a history of successfully placing those providers throughout northern Minnesota and tribal communities at a time when rural America is facing a shortage of clinicians. To address recruitment challenges in underserved communities, we engage in several innovative programs. Essentia is a leader of the Duluth Family Medicine Residency Program, which has graduated more than 400 physicians since 1975, all of whom were prepared specifically to practice in small towns. Our OB fellowship, the only one of its kind in Minnesota, similarly prepares physicians for rural areas, as does the University of Minnesota’s General Surgery Rural Track at Essentia Health. 

Essentia is headquartered in Duluth and has two training hospitals on our downtown campus — the new and state-of-the-art St. Mary’s Medical Center and Essentia Health-Duluth — as well as dozens of training sites in Greater Minnesota. We partner with the University of Minnesota to train close to 250 medical, nursing and health science students each year. We have 10,450 total employees in Minnesota.

Presently, Essentia provides more than 70% of the total clinical rotations to the Duluth medical school. This includes 100% of the training in critical care; OB/GYN; pediatrics; hospice and palliative care; ear, nose and throat surgery; sports medicine; orthopedics; and pediatric clinical care.  

Essentia Health joins the University of Minnesota and the City of Duluth in their commitment and dedication to building a world-class downtown Academic Health Sciences Center that will serve students, patients, our community, region and tribal communities for decades to come.