Mission
Our Mission
The UIC Urban Health Program’s mission is to recruit, retain and graduate African American/Black, Hispanic/Latinx, and American Indian pre-college, undergraduate pre-health, graduate and professional students with interest in the health sciences.
Message from the Executive Director Heading link
As the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Urban Health Program (UHP) proudly celebrates over 40 years of successfully supporting minority students in their endeavor to become health practitioners. The UHP has served as the primary source to help create greater accountability around recruitment and retention of our underrepresented minority students pursuing careers in the health professions. We started with a vision that has grown into a national model program for recruiting, retaining and graduating students and for that, we have much to be proud of. We are now poised to build upon our hard-earned legacy by taking the UHP to the next level.
Our program represents 40 plus years of partnerships and collaboration with program alumni, urban communities, and institutional partners in greater Chicago and across the state. I have been fortunate to serve this program alongside a talented group of dedicated stakeholders, all of whom share the same goals to provide quality services and programs that promote academic enrichment to assure that our students receive the needed support to succeed and become the health professionals in our communities in need.
To date, the UHP has graduated over 9,000 health professionals. While we are proud of what has been accomplished, we recognize that we cannot remain static. We must continue to improve the quality of service, find innovative ways to better engage and support our students by recognizing the cutting edge technology, innovations, and adapting to the changing environments.
UHP is consistently looking forward and we are ready to lead the way toward even greater progress. Progress means conducting a regular self-examination of the programs and opportunities creating a landscape anchored with the opportunity to better meet the changing environment in higher education, healthcare sector, and demographic, technological, and political atmospheres.