Academy Award winner Lou Gossett Jr., as host of Profiles, tells the stories of the University and Dr. Charles Drew. Dr Drew was an African-American physician, researcher and civil rights activist, whose pioneering work in the 1940s in blood plasma preservation, has saved the lives of nearly a billion people who required blood transfusions.

The nation’s only dually designated Historically Black Graduate Institution and Hispanic Serving Health Professions School, Charles Drew University is also a highly nationally ranked research institution, working with community groups to reduce health disparities and improve clinical care related to diabetes, depression, hypertension, HIV-AIDS and other high-impact health problems.

The University has dramatic and painful roots. It was formally established after a community’s frustration with an appalling lack of health care, transportation and educational opportunities led to the Watts Rebellion in 1965.  Now, over 40 years later and with a proud record of producing mission-driven doctors and other health professionals, the University still finds itself in the largest urban underserved area in the nation.  Such daunting challenges call for ambitious growth plans.

The Mervyn M. Dymally School of Nursing at the Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science will open in fall 2008. It is the first comprehensive nursing school to be built in California, and the first ever for South Los Angeles.  Continuing the successful 35 year partnership with the University of California, a new four-year medical school is being established enabling the university to make an even larger contribution to solving the physician shortage, particularly in California, and particularly among minority communities. Published research shows that most Charles Drew University doctors are still serving diverse and medically disadvantaged communities’ decades after graduation.