When I was growing up, dinner time at our house was dominated by boisterous political discussions. We were encouraged to have our own opinions and not to be shy in expressing them. Then at 6:30 each evening, we would assemble in the den to watch the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.
Walter Cronkite
We joined millions of other Americans to hear his familiar voice, which was always calm, steady, and unhurried. He told the truth as best he could, and his warm, authoritative baritone conveyed precision, quiet confidence, and most of all trust.
Cronkite had earned that trust by being reliably factual yet optimistic, honest yet humane, and consistently accountable. His coverage of the Vietnam War and U.S. space program is now legendary. He admitted what he didn鈥檛 know, was fearless in exposing the truth, corrected what he got wrong, and never mistook cynicism for wisdom. At the end of each broadcast, he offered a simple assurance: 鈥淎nd that鈥檚 the way it is.鈥�
In that sense, he modeled the kind of trust that we in health care must now rebuild, one honest conversation at a time.
If Cronkite were to walk the halls of American hospitals today, he would be astonished by the scientific advances. We have therapies that would have seemed like science fiction just decades ago. Yet he might be unsettled by a pervasive sense of pessimism in an era when both new information and misinformation travel at warp speed, burnout is rampant, and public confidence has frayed.
For USF Health, these challenges are not to be lamented. They are a clarion call to excellence.
As we enter 2026, our three core missions of education, research, and clinical care face both intensifying pressures and extraordinary opportunities to excel.
Education: Our USF Health learners are training amid unprecedented complexity: an accelerating knowledge base, evolving care models, new regulatory demands, increasing cost constraints, and the constant need for resilience. They require more than mastery of facts; they need critical judgment, teamwork, empathy, grit, and the ability to lead through ambiguity.
Across our four health sciences colleges and our Physical Therapy, Physician Assistant, Athletic Training, and Biomedical graduate programs, we are building learning environments where rigor and empathy comfortably coexist 鈥� where feedback is honest yet constructive, challenges are embraced, and excellence is expected.
Research: The grant funding environment remains fiercely competitive and very unpredictable, even as the tools for scientific discovery rapidly accelerate and grow more powerful every year. Success now demands faster translation, smarter use of data, and deep multidisciplinary collaboration. The public rightly expects research that is not only innovative, but relevant and meaningful, advancing tangible outcomes for real communities.
Fortunately, USF Health continues to rise to the challenge, with NIH funding growth placing us among the fastest鈥慳dvancing academic health centers in the nation, as reflected in our rising rankings.
Clinical care: Patients nationally are older, sicker, and understandably frustrated by fragmentation and delays. At the same time, health care workforces are stretched, financial margins tight, and trust can be shaken by a single headline, regardless of how carefully thousands of professionals delivered care that day.
Yet patients still want what they always have: to be heard, to be taken seriously, and to receive outstanding care without feeling reduced to a billing code.
USF Health has risen to this challenge as well. Over the past year, our faculty practice achieved record levels of quality care, outcomes, and patient satisfaction, while meeting incredible demands for our services. That is something to be proud of.
The Future Holds Immense Promise
So why am I so optimistic in the face of these challenges?
First because over the past year we have met all these challenges brilliantly, but also because the coming year will bring remarkable new tools and growing momentum to help restore public trust in health care.
At USF Health, artificial intelligence is already reducing friction in care delivery across our system: preventing errors, expediting image interpretation, improving population health management, and reducing non鈥憊alue鈥慳dded work for clinicians. Ambient clinical documentation tools integrated with our electronic health record are giving many providers back one to two hours a day, time reclaimed for listening, explaining, and healing. Reduced after-hours charting is restoring time with families. AI is also strengthening billing accuracy, accelerating discovery, and personalizing education at a pace no human system alone could hope to match.
Equally transformative is the revolution in metabolic medicine. Obesity and its inflammatory sequela 鈥� cardiovascular disease, chronic renal disease, diabetes, cancer, fatty liver disease, and dementia 鈥� remain among the greatest public health challenges of our time. Obesity also contributes to sleep apnea, arthritis, gastroesophageal reflux disease, asthma, infertility, pregnancy complications, depression, and frailty/sarcopenia associated with aging.
GLP鈥�1鈥揵ased therapies are already reshaping these clinical trajectories, with profound implications for disease prevention, health maintenance, and longevity. But scientific promise must be matched with ethical stewardship: ensuring equitable access, confirming long鈥憈erm safety, maximizing affordability, and integrating use of these agents with durable lifestyle changes and community support.
Add to this the accelerating promise of precision medicine, immuno鈥憃ncology, cell and gene therapies, hospital鈥慳t鈥慼ome models, remote patient monitoring and smarter clinical trials, and the message is clear: USF Health is not entering 2026 as a spectator.
In 2026, Let鈥檚 Build on Our Momentum
In 2025, the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine was ranked #1 in Florida and placed in the highest tier for research nationally by U.S. News & World Report, positioning us among the nation鈥檚 top 16 medical schools. This ranking was achieved because of both our remarkable education program and brilliant students as well as our extraordinary research performance. In FY2024, MCOM faculty secured approximately $380 million in total research funding, including nearly $190 million from the NIH, a three鈥慺old increase over the past decade, and FY2026 promises to be our best funding year ever. State investment in the planned Translational Research Institute facility and the continued development of the Tampa Medical & Research District will further accelerate discovery and translation.
Our clinical and educational excellence is inseparable from our partners. Tampa General Hospital, ranked among the nation鈥檚 best hospitals by U.S. News & World Report, remains essential to our academic mission, clinical growth, and regional impact. In just eight short years, TGH has expanded to become one of the nation鈥檚 largest academic health centers, with care sites located throughout Florida. Moffitt Cancer Center, a nationally recognized NCI鈥慸esignated comprehensive cancer center, provides unparalleled research and training opportunities for our learners. Johns Hopkins All Children鈥檚 Hospital continues to co-anchor pediatric education and GME excellence with TGH鈥檚 Muma Children鈥檚 Hospital, ensuring our trainees learn in environments defined by both compassion and complexity. The James A. Haley and Bay Pines VA medical centers, among the nation鈥檚 best in their quality and quantity of care, allow our trainees to care for and serve our country鈥檚 most deserving patients. And for the next year and a half, our SELECT medical students will continue to benefit from the strong commitment to education provided by our faculty in the Lehigh Valley Health network.
Across USF Health, momentum is broad鈥慴ased: the College of Nursing continues unprecedented enrollment growth and workforce impact; NIH funding at the College of Public Health is rising; our Physical Therapy, Physician Assistant, and Athletic Training programs achieve outstanding licensure outcomes; and the Taneja College of Pharmacy is well-positioned for renewed leadership and innovation.
This is what excellence looks like: strong fundamentals, national visibility, aligned partnerships, and measurable progress.
But Walter Cronkite would remind us that trust is not built on rankings. It is built on relationships.
So let us make 2026 the year we do the basics extraordinarily well:
- Tell the truth clearly, especially when it鈥檚 complicated
- Measure what matters: quality, safety, access, excellence, and impact
- Own our misses, quickly, openly, and visibly
- Use technology to deepen humanity, not replace it
- Treat one another like the scarce and precious resource we are
In short, let us lead like scientists, teach like mentors, care like healers, and communicate like Walter Cronkite: steady, factually, and worthy of the public鈥檚 confidence.
Thank you for what you gave in 2025, often without fanfare, sometimes without enough sleep, and always in service to something larger than yourselves. I could not be prouder of what we have built together, and I am even more excited about what we will earn together in 2026.
And that鈥檚 the way it is 鈥� at USF Health.