California Northstate University

California Northstate University College of Medicine (CNUCOM) was founded by investors who, as community leaders, had previously established a successful College of Pharmacy within the Sacramento, California region. The investors include individuals who are developers, former governmental officials, active medical practitioners, and pharmacists. The institution is "proprietary" and community-based with a budgetary model that ensures sufficient resources for a new, innovative system for training future physicians and for the development of its faculty to explore new innovative educational techniques. There is a nationwide shortage of physicians in primary care, but this shortage is particularly acute in California. The Board of Trustees of California Northstate University (CNU) proposed to establish a second college, a College of Medicine, four years after funding and founding the College of Pharmacy. The pharmacy college has demonstrated that it can provide innovative training and be financially solvent while providing a modest return to the investors. Most public and private universities that provide medical and pharmacy training do not have the capital or space to increase the number of physicians needed by this state and the country. In contrast to the government, the private sector has the resources to achieve this human resource growth, particularly since we are entering a third year of recession with the resultant stresses on governmental budgets. Much of the preliminary design of the structure of the College of Medicine and its curriculum was in place by June/July 2011. As part of this process, community leaders in medicine within the Sacramento Valley were engaged in a series of evening and weekend meetings to plan the outlines and address the key issues to be covered in the medical school curriculum. This committed core group established the broad outlines of the curriculum and structure of the College of Medicine and also served as members of the Institutional Self-Study Task Force. They were visionary and demanded that this new school stress areas of training frequently ignored or understated by many medical schools. Many brought 20-30 years of experience in direct medical practice in the highly competitive Sacramento region to provide insight on how to best train future physicians. They noted that our nation is poised to institute new schemes for providing universal health to its citizens and, at the same time, provide care that is high quality, cost-effective and evidence-based. This is evident in our mission statement: To advance the art and science of Medicine through Education, Service, Scholarship and Social Accountability.