With personal healthcare expenditures in the United States at about $1 trillion, or 13 percent of gross domestic product, and recent studies projecting growth to twice that amount within a decade, the nation's healthcare system has never before played such a large role in daily life.

Advances in science and technology are helping people to live longer with new treatments for diseases. Patients surf the Internet to learn more about alternative medical treatments to discuss with their doctors. Political debates abound about how to pay for the health benefits of an increasingly aging and longer-living population, even as the U.S. Census Bureau reports that 15 percent of Americans have no health insurance coverage. All of this is occurring in the face of an existing shortage of nurses and allied health specialists that will soon be compounded by a projected need for physicians and pharmacists to replace retiring baby boomers.

In Connecticut, healthcare employment accounts for 11.4 percent of the state's workforce - about 195,000 people - making it the fifth-largest concentration of healthcare workers in the nation, according to a recent Milken Institute study of the health care economy. Personal healthcare expenditures in Connecticut are $15.2 billion, an average of $3,759 per capita, according to the State Health Care Facts Online website of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

Considering these trends, the University of Connecticut has increasingly assumed a more prominent role in the state's healthcare industry in several ways:

• The UConn Health Center is one of Connecticut's 31 acute care hospitals and is helping to lead the way toward new discoveries for treating disease as a teaching hospital and medical research center.
  
  
• Graduates of the University's five health-related schools (Nursing, Pharmacy, Allied Health, Medicine and Dental Medicine) and thousands more work in related fields after completing UConn degrees in programs such as nutritional science in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, adult development and aging in the School of Family Studies or molecular and cell biology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
  
  
• In addition to preparing health-related professionals, the schools of Business, Law and Social Work educate managers, attorneys, accountants, social workers and others who go on to work as healthcare administrators throughout the industry in hospitals, nursing homes, community social service agencies, laboratories and related fields.
  
  

"It's a field that no matter what you do, you make a difference each and every day," says Jennifer Jackson '93 J.D., president of the Connecticut Hospital Association. "I don't ever see a diminished demand for these services. If someone is interested in using their talents with what they've learned in school, there is no better business to be in."

The demand for healthcare services will continue to grow too, according to a 2003 forecast of the Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development of the American Hospital Association. The assessment predicts, among other things, an increasing role for computer technology in all aspects of healthcare and a greater patient voice in the treatment of illness. While the future still remains uncertain, UConn healthcare experts say today's students are gaining the knowledge and skills they will need to meet the challenges they ultimately will face in the rapidly evolving healthcare industry.

"A lot of what has happened in recent years in our curriculum is to transform students into lifelong learners," says Scott Wetstone, '79 M.D., assistant professor of community medicine at the School of Medicine and director of health affairs and policy planning at the UConn Health Center. "We change them from rote memorizers to being active thinkers capable not only of changing the paradigms but also of making their own judgments as to what is correct or incorrect so they can individualize patient care."

Wetstone says the re-emergence of infectious diseases and the speed with which they can be spread around the world has made it critical for health professionals to be able to quickly determine a patient's needs and know how to provide treatment. "There was a long period of time after antibiotics were introduced that eliminated the concern about infectious disease. Polio was probably the last major concern. Globalization has made it possible for diseases such as AIDS or SARS in an isolated part of a remote country to reach around the world," he says.

An interdisciplinary, team approach to treating patients is also growing increasingly important, says Joseph Smey, dean of allied health, where core courses provide students with the knowledge and skills to work with other health professionals. "Our school was founded on several goals, one of which was interdisciplinary education because we thought that over time healthcare will require greater appreciation and skill in collaboration," he says.

David Grant, right, associate professor of pharmaceutical science, working with students in his lab.

Robert McCarthy, dean of pharmacy, says today's students are learning that the role of pharmacists has evolved significantly from the days of primarily filling prescriptions written by a doctor. "It's really about pharmaceutical care," he says. "It's ensuring the patient has optimal drug therapy that's going to achieve definite outcomes. It used to be the physician who worried about the drug doing what it was supposed to. Now it's really a shared responsibility."

Nowhere are the challenges in healthcare being felt more dramatically than in nursing, where nursing professionals must juggle a myriad of new information, technology and patient demands.

"It's very exciting for these students when they come out of school," says Laura Dzurec '74 (NUR), dean of nursing. "I told a group of juniors:

Your lives are about to change. You'll never be the same. Every day you'll be bombarded with physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual challenges. Communication is the key. The students really need to come out knowing how to learn, how to get more information. What they know today is outdated shortly. You have to be technology savvy and people need to work in an interdisciplinary way."

McCarthy says that to reinforce the need for increasing collaboration among healthcare professionals the schools of Pharmacy, Nursing, Family Studies and Allied Health are exploring potential joint efforts in research and teaching.

UConn alumni who are in senior positions in the healthcare industry say the continuing need to acquire new knowledge, adapt to changes and face challenges are just some of the reasons they enjoy doing what they do.

"Healthcare is a very challenging field. It presents relentless demand. It provides extraordinary rewards, principally through the personal satisfaction derived from helping other people," says Joseph Zaccagnino '68 (BUS), the president and chief executive officer of Yale New Haven Health System.

"It goes to the basic need we all have to be cared for. It's quite different from providing a product or a service in the commercial sector. There's a dimension of helping people and applying your talents in a way that makes a difference. I think it's what draws people to the field and keeps them there."