? The University of New Mexico (UNM) has consolidated its faculties of Medicine, Pharmacy, and Nursing to form a Health Sciences Center (HSC) committed to programmatic research that is competitive nationally and responsive locally to the healthcare needs of New Mexico's 1.7 million citizens, which includes the highest percentage of Hispanics (42 percent) and American Indians (nine percent) in the United States of America (USA). The HSC will devote its first integrated research building, a three-story, 73,595 sq. ft. $34 million Health Research Institute (HRI), to collaborative, multidisciplinary research programs on diseases that affect the health of New Mexicans. The building will gain identity and focus through strong community-based disease prevention programs addressing substance abuse, obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular, and respiratory diseases on its first floor. The second floor will house laboratory research programs in toxicology and environmental diseases. The third floor will house laboratory research programs in traumatic brain injury and stroke, alcoholism and Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, behavioral health, movement disorders and neurotoxicology. This application requests $4 million in National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) funding, matched by $4 million in HSC funding, to construct the third floor laboratories for the Neurobiology research programs. Neuroscience research has undergone a tremendous increase in activity and National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding over the past five years since the creation of the Department of Neurosciences and the advent of UNM Minority Institute for Neurologic Diseases (MIND) Imaging Center. The growth of basic neurobiology research is increasingly constrained by the limitations of its existing facilities. The relocation of the neurobiology programs to the HRI building in close proximity to the Toxicology and Disease Prevention programs will create additional new opportunities for program development that will provide long-term benefits for the health and well-being of New Mexicans. ? ?
