A Health Care Education Hub for New England
For decades, UNE’s Portland Campus has been the home of many of the University’s health professions programs. With the 2025 relocation of the UNE College of Osteopathic Medicine (UNE COM) from Biddeford now complete, the campus has officially become the center of health care education in Northern New England. To recognize that transformation, UNE recently renamed the campus the Portland Campus for the Health Sciences.
Bringing together future physicians, dentists, pharmacists, nurses, public health experts, and other providers under one roof, the campus fosters an interprofessional learning community that is unique in New England. This collaborative environment empowers the next generation of health care leaders through teamwork, innovation, and real-world training.
The Future of health care is Interprofessional
Interprofessional health care education places students from different disciplines together to learn with, from, and about each other. Students gain communication and teamwork skills and develop a better understanding of each profession’s roles and expertise. UNE graduates with interprofessional training become professionals who are able to collaborate and lead in today’s team-based care. The greatest benefits of the approach are experienced by patients — interprofessional learning has proven to support successful health care outcomes.
UNE’s Portland Campus provides interprofessional learning opportunities for these programs:
A Historic Campus for Modern Health Education
The Portland Campus for the Health Sciences provides a quintessential New England quad lined by buildings that have been welcoming students for more than a century. The campus sits in a quiet neighborhood, just a short drive from the downtown waterfront.
It is already home to the UNE Westbrook College of Health Professions and College of Dental Medicine, along with an array of modern health professions learning spaces and labs, including the Portland Laboratory for Biotechnology and Health Sciences. UNE COM will welcome its first class of medical students to the Portland campus in Summer 2025.
The 41-acre campus also features Innovation Hall’s event spaces, the UNE Art Gallery, and Maine Women Writers Collection.
The Harold and Bibby Alfond Center for Health Sciences
The Harold and Bibby Alfond Center for Health Sciences is a brand-new, four-story facility that serves as the home of UNE COM. It features a 240-seat tiered lecture hall, a health center with 20 fully equipped exam rooms for patient simulations, an Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine patient clinic, and a donor lab with 50 dissection tables — the only one of its kind in southern Maine. The new building has given UNE students an ideal learning and community space — furthering UNE’s leadership in medical and health professions education, while positioning the school to train more doctors in the years ahead. The building is also home to the Center to Advance Interprofessional Education and Practice (CAIEP), which prepares students to work collaboratively and across disciplines.
A Transformative Moment for Maine
The evolution of the UNE Portland Campus for the Health Sciences is transformative, not only for the University, but also for the state of Maine. The campus allows UNE to address critical health care disparities across the region and to graduate health professionals with best-in-class skills: improving patient outcomes through team-based care; fostering expertise with new and emerging technologies; and expanding our focus on cross-cultural competencies.
