At the August 5 Rotary Club of San Antonio luncheon, Dr. Amy L. Waer, dean of the Texas A&M University Naresh K. Vashisht College of Medicine, explained why the college chose San Antonio for its clinical expansion, what it is building here, and how that growth connects to the state's physician shortage.
Waer has led the college since 2019, first as interim dean and then in the permanent role beginning in January 2021. A general surgeon, she completed her undergraduate degree, medical school, and general surgery residency at the University of Arizona, and spent fourteen years at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center before joining Texas A&M in 2018. She is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and a first-generation college graduate.
Her talk covered three areas: why the college selected San Antonio, what is being built here, and the research arriving alongside the expansion.
The college is one of seventeen medical schools in Texas and one of the older ones, founded in 1977 and turning fifty next year. It enrolls roughly 960 medical students across four years, along with about 200 graduate students earning doctorates in medical sciences. As a state-funded, land-grant institution, its charge is to produce primary care physicians, and between 40 and 60 percent of its graduates enter primary care specialties in any given year. Waer noted that physicians who attend medical school and complete residency in Texas are considerably more likely to remain in practice here, which is the point of expanding training capacity rather than simply enrolling more students.
San Antonio was a deliberate choice. Waer pointed to the city's growth, now the sixth largest in the country after passing Philadelphia, and to a medical education market less saturated than Houston or Dallas-Fort Worth. The military presence mattered as well. The Department of Defense has concentrated much of its healthcare mission in San Antonio, and the college operates both a military medicine program and a veterans health program.
The college is a community-based medical school, meaning it has no teaching hospital of its own and depends on clinical affiliates. That structure shaped its approach here. Roughly three years ago the college began working with Texas A&M San Antonio, a sister institution in the Texas A&M System, and partnered with University Health, which was already planning an additional hospital. The resulting Palo Alto Hospital is under construction on Jaguar Parkway, directly across from the Texas A&M San Antonio campus. The agreement was signed in March.
On the research side, Waer described work by Dr. Ashok Shetty, a college researcher who developed a nasal spray that delayed the onset of dementia in mice by a margin equivalent to ten to fifteen years in humans. The patent took more than two years to secure, and the treatment is headed toward clinical trials.
She also pointed to the Dementia Prevention Research Institute of Texas, approved by the legislature but not yet operational while legal details are resolved. Waer said the college is prepared to take a leading role in dementia prevention research once the institute is running, in the way the state's cancer prevention institute has functioned for oncology.
For San Antonio, the practical result is a second medical school investing in local clinical training capacity, tied to a hospital now being built on the South Side and to a university already established in the region.
