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The teaching clinics of the University Hospitals and Clinics now occupy what was a large department store in a large shopping mall for all the Medical Center's teaching clinics. With the Medical Center as "anchor tenant," the once vacant mall in an economically depressed neighborhood is now a thriving center for one-stop health shopping.

The Medical Center is the state's sole provider of a complete range of health professional education. It has the state's only teaching hospitals and is the tertiary care center for the entire state. Until early in 1998, the center's teaching clinics, which saw 100,000 patients annually, were located in 40,000 square feet of space on the Medical Center campus that was designed in 1955. Woefully inadequate as the space was, the cost of building a freestanding ambulatory care center on campus seemed prohibitive at $30 million. Prominent members of the African-American community in Jackson approached the Medical Center administration with the idea of buying the Jackson Mall, built in 1969.

Once home to three major department stores, it was–before its transformation–a largely vacant eyesore, the target of vandals and a haven for crime. Community leaders wanted a new use which would invigorate the neighborhood.

The Medical Center moved quickly to help create the nonprofit Jackson Medical Mall Foundation which purchased the entire mall for $2.7 million with loans backed by the Medical Center.

The published commitment of the foundation was to the "expansion of high quality, affordable health care in the Jackson metro area" as well as to the "economic recovery of the neighborhood surrounding the Jackson Medical Mall."

All of the Medical Center's specialty clinics are in what was once a large department store in completely new and renovated 191,000 square feet of space. Nearly all of the medical specialties are represented with clinics at the mall. Services also include radiologic services including mammography, a cardio-pulmonary rehab center, a diabetes education center, artificial kidney unit and the Adolescent and Child Tobacco (ACT) Treatment and Research Center. Planning is currently underway for a comprehensive cancer research and treatment center which also will be housed at the mall.

The Medical Center also operates a primary care center at the mall where patients gain access to the system without physician referral. Physicians in family medicine, ob-gyn, pediatrics and adult medicine see patients for primary care or refer them to the specialty clinics across the mall concourse if their condition makes it necessary for specialty care.

The state health department clinics, Mississippi Blood Services, First Call for Help, city social services and water department, an AIDS community outreach program and clinics for the NIH-funded Jackson Heart Study are all located in the mall. The old 700-seat movie theatre and adjoining meeting rooms now serve as a major conference center for both the Medical Center and the community.

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This page last modified on August 21, 2007