Duluth City Council to hear resolution on downtown medical school campus

DULUTH — The Duluth City Council will hear a new resolution Tuesday, Oct. 15, in support of building an academic health sciences center in the medical district. University of Minnesota officials will also be looking to advance a request for a new, expanded medical school campus at their Board of Regents meeting this week.

“Right now is a really critical time, ahead of the next legislative session,” said at large Duluth Councilor Arik Forsman, who will introduce Resolution 24-0815R. “We want to send a clear signal in Duluth that we are here to support our medical school campus, and we agree it should be downtown.”

Contributed / Lynnette's Portrait Design

If the resolution is approved, the city will notify the dean of the Duluth medical school, as well as local legislators.

Forsman said the plan was far from unlikely. “It’s a practical reality, but it’s going to take advocacy for sure,” he said.

He suggested Duluth has a strong argument to make. “We have a strong legacy to build on, and the fact that we’re really the only regional center in the northern portion of the state, it just makes all the sense in the world to me,” he said.

Forsman said the Northland deserves “a stronger talent pipeline within our community to provide the best-quality care that would not exist without teaching hospitals.” This could serve patients and families trying to provide support in difficult times, he noted.

Nearly half of those graduating from the current University of Minnesota medical school campus in Duluth, established in 1972 to focus on rural health care, remain in rural communities to practice medicine.

Three years ago, the state designated a portion of downtown as the Duluth Regional Exchange District to create economic opportunities for Greater Minnesota through institutions such as health care or higher education. That July, the council approved the acceptance of funds appropriated for the district.

Gary Meader / File / Duluth Media Group

In 2022, the University of Minnesota began seeking funding from the legislature to build  a new medical school  campus in downtown Duluth that includes the College of Pharmacy.

According to the resolution, construction of the medical school campus downtown would result in economic growth, specifically with additional housing, child care facilities and retail spaces, and serve the city, tribal nations and the wider region.

The resolution states that the need to focus on rural health care, as well as training of Native American practitioners and treatment of Native American patients, continues to grow throughout the region.

The current medical school campus, which houses the Center of American Indian and Minority Health, is ranked second in the country for graduating Native American physicians.

In September, the university announced plans to expand the medical school program in Duluth from a two-year to a four-year program.

The Duluth campus partners with Aspirus St. Luke’s and Essentia Health, and each of the local teaching hospitals has offered locations for the proposed new medical school campus. Forsman described the friendly competition between the two health systems as akin to a sibling rivalry.

“It’s the university’s decision to make. I just truly want to see it built,” Forsman said.

Aspirus St. Luke’s is proposing the new medical school campus be built between the south side of First Street, between Eighth and Ninth avenues east. Essentia has offered to make the site of the former St. Mary’s Medical Center on the Fourth Street corridor available to the university at no cost.

Gary Meader / File / Duluth Media Group

“We can use the recent investments by both hospitals and then leverage that with bringing a campus like this into those neighborhoods because potentially the economic spinoff that could come from all of that put together is really exciting, and we don’t want to miss that moment,” Forsman said.

Both Essentia Health and Aspirus St. Luke’s health systems participate in the Duluth Family Medicine Residency Program. Since 1975, the residency has graduated more than 400 physicians specifically trained to practice in rural towns.

Aspirus St. Luke's invests over $2 million annually into the program, and provides training to an average of 80 medical students and residents annually, according to its media release.

Essentia partners with the university at both of its Duluth campuses (Essentia Health-Duluth and St. Mary’s Medical Center) to train nearly 250 medical, nursing and health science students each year, and provides more than 70% of the total clinical rotations to its current medical school.

Aspirus St. Luke’s also partners with the College of Pharmacy, currently located at UMD, on internships and job opportunities for students and joint positions for faculty. An accredited pharmacy residency is also supported at Aspirus St. Luke’s, which prepares nearly a dozen pharmacy interns for the complex work involved in oncology and other hospital-based environments.

Forsman said he remains “agnostic” as to the site where a U of M medical center should be built, adding, “The city is not taking a position on where this should go.”

“The goal is to build it here,” Forsman said. “It’s up to the university to pick a site. But I just want to make sure that it’s here in Duluth, period.”