Twenty-five years ago, Clark County had a population of 1.4 million — but no medical school. The lone medical school was in Washoe County, which had four times fewer people. But today, four schools in Southern Nevada offer medical or health science doctorates. They each shared some recent highlights in their efforts to expand medical education in a state ranked 45th in the nation for active physicians per capita.
UNLV's Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine
The largest med school in Las Vegas, UNLV’s Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine, recently welcomed the Department of Brain Health. It also just celebrated its 10-year anniversary in 2024. The school’s vice dean for clinical affairs, Dr. Alison Netski, says UNLV’s current goal is to be a “landing place” for students from other institutions around the country and state.
“In the next 10 years, I really hope that we would either double or triple the graduate medical education [GME] opportunities for students.”
More immediately, Netski says UNLV will be actively advocating for more residency funding at this year’s legislative session.
“We have been educating people in government on some successful models [for residency],” she says. “I can point to one in Texas, where they put upwards of $200 million into their GME programs every year because they understand that there needs to be some infrastructure that's in place that helps support the training in the hospitals. We obviously have a smaller population, we have a smaller state budget, and so we're not asking for $200 million. But we will be asking for money to be able to start these programs.”
State-level support might prove to be particularly important in the next four years, as the NIH considers freezing federal grant funding to med schools on the mandate of President Donald Trump.
Netski says UNLV, and institutions across the state and country, are concerned.
“People think overhead is just some kind of fluff money,” she says, “but really it is the brick and mortar that goes into what it takes to be sustainable in research. Most of the grants pay for supplies, and they pay for personnel.”
Touro University Nevada
Touro, as of December 2024, is now home to a fully accredited clinical simulation center, making it the first of its kind in Nevada. Here, students can practice medication administration, protocol for obstetrics and delivery, and blood draws, among other things.
This hands-on training goes a long way in increasing students’ real-world competence, says Dr. Wolfgang Gilliar, dean of Touro’s College of Osteopathic Medicine.
“We have data that shows that these students have one thing that they otherwise would not have [without clinical simulations], and that's confidence.”
But the end goal, says Gilliar, is keeping the students who pass through Touro’s programs in Nevada. The good news on that front is that local graduates who are forced to move out of state for residencies are coming back to practice in Nevada, to the tune of 10-15% more than last year.
The reason?
“They liked it here. They had a very good experience as a medical student,” says Gilliar.
Roseman University of Health Sciences
Filling the gap between med students trained and med students retained in-state is one of the driving factors behind Roseman’s new preliminarily accredited MD program.
Roseman’s founding dean, Dr. Pedro “Joe” Greer, Jr., says first generation students will continue to be one of the school’s main focuses, because of how likely they are to return to Nevada.
“One thing we know from the last institution that we started in South Florida,” he says “is almost all our first generation students come home. They're the first ones in their family to have the opportunity to earn generational wealth. They want to take care of their family, and this is their home.”
This is especially important in a post-affirmative action era.
“Since the SCOTUS decision on diversity, Blacks and Hispanics have decreased admission by 20 and 22% into medical school, which are markedly low to begin with.”
Once it reaches full accreditation, the MD program will make Roseman only the third allopathic medical school in the state.
Hawai’i Pacific University
The new health science institution on the block celebrated its grand opening on February 18. That made it the first time a Hawaii-based university opened a campus on the mainland – and it’s offering doctoral programs in occupational and physical therapies.
Dr. Tricia Catalino is dean of the Graduate College of Health Sciences at UPC. She says the University decided to offer these two health programs specifically because both specialties have seen either a marked decrease, or only slight increase, in number of providers over the last decade in Clark County.
As for why UPC chose Southern Nevada, Catalino says it’s an obvious choice.
“There's a very strong connection between Las Vegas — what some like to call the Ninth Island — and Hawai’i. We have the largest population of native Hawaiians who live here in this region.”
Guests: Dr. Wolfgang Gilliar, dean of the college of osteopathic medicine, Touro University Nevada; Dr. Pedro “Joe” Greer Jr., founding dean, Roseman University of Health Sciences; Dr. Alison Netski, vice dean for clinical affairs, UNLV Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine; Dr. Tricia Catalino, dean of the graduate college of health sciences, Hawai’i Pacific University
