Harlingen has land for Valley medical school

Harlingen has land for Valley medical school
By Lynn Brezosky - Express-News Web Posted: 03/30/2010 4:58 CDT

HARLINGEN — This city's hopes of hosting a full-scale medical school in the Rio Grande Valley got a boost Tuesday when Mayor Chris Boswell announced a 35-acre land donation to site the facility.

The announcement accompanied a California consulting firm's presentation of a strategy to expand the Regional Academic Health Center, an arm of the University of Texas Health Science Center-San Antonio, into a campus where the Valley's first new class of doctors could graduate as early as 2021.

Some 800 UTHSC-SA students have completed their third and fourth years at the RAHC since it opened in 2002.

The RAHC has two buildings in Harlingen in addition to research branches at the University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg and the University of Texas-Brownsville. It is part of a growing medical complex in Harlingen that includes two hospitals, a veterans care center now being expanded and a comprehensive health clinic.

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