UAMS Senior Health Center in Bella Vista to Hold Dedication
| LITTLE ROCK – Dedication ceremonies and an open house for the Schmieding Center for Senior Health and Education – Bella Vista, an outreach of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), will be held at 2 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 12, at 1801 Forest Hills Blvd.
The new center is located in the Highland Crossing Community Center and is an outreach of the Schmieding Center for Senior Health and Education in Springdale, which was developed by the Arkansas Aging Initiative (AAI), a program of the Donald W. Reynolds Center on Aging at UAMS.
The AAI is the only program of its kind in the country and seeks to help make quality health care readily available to older Arkansans within a 50-mile radius of their homes.
Seven satellite centers were developed by the AAI in partnership with the UAMS Area Health Education Centers, local and regional hospitals and local communities. Additional outreach programs, like the one in Bella Vista, have been developed to accommodate community needs. The AAI receives annual assistance of $2 million from the tobacco settlement to develop and maintain the centers and outreach programs.
The Schmieding Center is named for Lawrence H. Schmieding, owner and president of Springdale-based Schmieding Produce, who donated $15 million to build the 27,500- square-foot facility in Springdale and to maintain its educational programs. The mission of the center is to improve the quality of life for older adults through awareness and disease prevention. The SCHSE has additional outreach programs in Harrison and Mountain Home.
UAMS is the state’s only comprehensive academic health center, with five colleges, a graduate school, a medical center, five centers of excellence and a statewide network of regional centers. UAMS has about 2,170 students and 650 residents and is the state’s largest public employer with almost 9,000 employees. UAMS and its affiliates have an economic impact in Arkansas of about $3.8 billion a year.
UAMS centers of excellence are the Arkansas Cancer Research Center, Harvey and Bernice Jones Eye Institute, Donald W. Reynolds Center on Aging, Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy and Jackson T. Stephens Spine and Neurosciences Institute.