Investor Spotlight: USF Health
November 29, 2022
USF Health’s mission is to envision and implement the future of health. It is the partnership of the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine (MCOM), the College of Nursing, the College of Public Health, the Taneja College of Pharmacy, the School of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Sciences, the Biomedical Sciences Graduate and Postdoctoral Programs, and USF Health’s multispecialty physician group. The University of South Florida is a high-impact global research university dedicated to student success. Over the past 10 years, no other public university in the country has risen faster in U.S. News and World Report’s national university rankings than USF. For more information, visit health.usf.edu.
Charles J. Lockwood, MD, MHCM, Executive Vice President, USF Health, Dean, USF Health Morsani College of Medicine
As executive vice president of USF Health, Dr. Lockwood leads USF Health’s colleges and programs and oversees the USF Health faculty group practice, which with more than 1,000 providers, is one of the largest multispecialty practices in Florida. Dr. Lockwood also serves as the MCOM dean and as a professor in its Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology and in the College of Public Health. Dr. Lockwood also is an executive vice president and chief academic officer at Tampa General Hospital.
What role do you see your organization playing in helping to shape and grow our life sciences sector?
Over the past decade, the Morsani College of Medicine has been the fastest-rising medical school in research, according to U.S. News & World Report. We’ve risen from #80 to #46 in their rankings. Our investment in research has helped fuel that rise. Our research expenditures this year total over $214 million, including over $70 million from the National Institutes of Health. That’s great news for Tampa, because studies show that every $1 the NIH invests in research generates an additional $2.21 in goods and services. Over time, that story gets even better: every dollar invested in public basic research stimulates another $8.38 of industry investment over 8 years.
What excites you most about Tampa’s future?
Tampa Bay is evolving and growing so fast that it’s hard to keep track. It’s especially rewarding to see the growth downtown around our new facility on Water Street which houses the Morsani College of Medicine, Taneja College of Pharmacy and USF Health Heart Institute. Investments by the medical school, Tampa General Hospital and our supporters are driving evolution of a new downtown Tampa medical district as well as on the main USF campus and in our St. Petersburg campus Children’s Research Institute. We expect this growth will only continue, making Tampa Bay an even more attractive location for new biotech, pharmaceutical and research companies.
What in your view are USF Health’s greatest opportunities for growth in the short term, and the longer term?
We are now in the midst of a dramatic expansion of our USF Health College of Nursing to address Florida’s critical nursing shortage. Thanks to $45 million in funding from our state leaders, we are adding new space, faculty, and staff so that by 2028, we will graduate over 750 undergraduate nurses each year, about a 200 percent increase. For the Morsani College of Medicine, in order to continue the historic growth in our research enterprise, we need to add more research facilities. With Tampa General Hospital, our primary teaching hospital, we’re also continuing to expand our patient care services across the state, allowing more people access to the kind of advanced complex care only available at an academic medical center like ours.
