Center for Reducing Health Disparities

FES (Functional Electrical Stimulation) Center

CTSC Clinical Research Unit at MetroHealth Medical Center

Heart and Vascular Research Center

Kidney Disease Research Center

Rammelkamp Center for Education and Research

A Tradition of Research and Excellence

From its beginning as Cleveland’s first academic medical center in 1837, MetroHealth Medical Center has been dedicated to the science of improving health care. MetroHealth is a major teaching hospital for Case Western Reserve University (Case), one of the nation’s leading research universities. All faculty hold academic appointments at Case School of Medicine, often with additional appointments in basic science departments.

At the MetroHealth campus of Case, we have established Centers of Excellence that integrate basic research in molecular, cell, and whole organ physiology, with genetic epidemiology and clinical research to identify the genetic and environmental causes of disease.

Our Centers are comprised of basic scientists, clinical scientists, and epidemiologists and are extensively funded by agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association.  The integrated approaches of our Centers of Excellence lead to unique and novel diagnostic and therapeutic modalities.

Our ongoing commitment to academic and clinical excellence, coupled with extensive capabilities in biotechnology, bioengineering, genetics, and population science, will ensure that MetroHealth continues to grow as one of the major research and training centers in the country.

“Bench to Bedside”

MetroHealth is best known for its “bench to bedside” approach to research.  Our interdisciplinary research teams build on MetroHealth’s mission by taking research from the laboratory to the clinical setting, where it directly benefits patients.  With over 80,000 square feet dedicated to research in the Charles H. Rammelkamp, Jr., M.D., Center for Education and Research, MetroHealth is partnered with Case Western Reserve University in key areas of scientific discovery and biomedical technology. 

Examples of our commitment to academic medicine include:

• The Center for Health Care Research and Policy and the Case Center for Reducing Health Disparities, both housed at MetroHealth Medical Center, focus clinical researchers on diabetes and other chronic diseases that disproportionately afflict minority populations.
• The exploration of cellular and molecular biology by basic scientists studying  neurons that monitor changes in cardiac rhythm and blood pressure, calcium changes in vascular cells, cell migration and proliferation and cell death or apoptosis, in cancer therapy.
• Basic scientists studying exotic fish to understand the genetic variants that may be responsible for complex diseases like diabetes and other metabolic disorders.

• The Heart and Vascular Research Center focuses on the molecular basis for cardiac arrhythmias to redefine risk factors for sudden cardiac death as well as provides state-of-the-art cardiovascular clinical research.
• MetroHealth’s Kidney Disease Research Center strives to understand kidney disease on the cellular and genetic level with the goal of improving the health of future generations of men and women at risk for diabetic nephropathy.
• MetroHealth’s Stroke Center, the first in Northeast Ohio to become a JCAHO-accredited Primary Stroke Center, provides cutting-edge research that explores every facet of stroke care, including prevention, emergency care, acute inpatient, and rehabilitation studies.
• The Cleveland Functional Electrical Stimulation Center, an internationally acclaimed center, in collaboration with MetroHealth, Case, and the Stokes Veterans Administration Medical Center, provides cutting-edge research opportunities to patients who have suffered catastrophic injuries leaving them paralyzed.  This research has led to functional independence for many spinal-cord-injured patients.
• Committed to research in geriatric care, MetroHealth researchers are establishing a National Technical Assistance Center for geriatric education programs to offer training in geriatric medicine to students, faculty and practitioners across the health care profession.
• Other Centers of Excellence that perform clinical research at MetroHealth Medical Center include: women and children’s health, trauma, cancer, psychiatry, gastroenterology, pulmonary, infectious disease, orthopedics, and rehabilitation.

Diverse Protocols

As a principal teaching center of Case School of Medicine, MetroHealth Medical Center has 700 open protocols offering MetroHealth patients a unique opportunity to participate in research that one day may advance our understanding of today’s diseases in an effort to improve lives and close the gap in health disparities.