The University of New Mexico is building a multimillion-dollar health policy center to increase American Indian and Hispanic scholars’ involvement in national health policy research and development.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, one of the nation’s largest philanthropy foundations devoted exclusively to improving health care, gave the university a $18.5 million grant — the largest private gift in UNM history — to establish the center at the UNM campus. The center aims to help American Indian and Hispanic students who are pursuing doctoral programs in the social sciences.

UNM, the state’s largest university, is home to the state’s only schools of architecture, law, medicine and pharmacy, and operates New Mexico’s only academic health center. Almost half of its 32,300 students are minorities, including 30 percent Hispanic and 12 percent American Indian.

“The creation of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy at the University of New Mexico comes at a time when the nation’s ethnic and racial diversity is rapidly increasing, and will be guided by the principle that development of health policy should be grounded in the experience of the people it represents,” says Charlene Porsild, the center’s program manager. “Currently, few Hispanics and Native Americans are bringing their perspectives to health policy discussions.”

The center is scheduled to be completed this fall and is expected to train approximately 100 students within five years of opening. 

Porsild will be searching the country for doctoral students. Candidates will be eligible for $22,000 annual scholarships and will be able to choose courses of study existing within UNM’s political science, economics and sociology programs.

Doctoral fellowships will also be available in programs such as anthropology, communications, education and journalism. Additional center money exists for dissertation research scholarships, postdoctoral fellows, part-time graduate students and joint master’s-doctoral degrees in public health.