UO > Community Profile > Albuquerque, NM

The University of New Mexico, another long-time Central Avenue landmark, now incorporates a medical school and large teaching hospital. The University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center can boast of its own accomplishments, such as selection as one of the top 15 major teaching performance improvement hospitals by Solucient, a leading provider of health-care business intelligence. UNM also operates the Children’s Hospital.

UNM research involvement includes studies on cerebral palsy at its neuro-imaging facility and work on the protein genome, but a big source of pride, especially in a rural state, is the School of Medicine’s ranking for the 10th time by US News & World Report as the number two school for rural medicine, out of 144 medical and osteopathic schools. Going hand in hand with that designation are high ratings for the College of Nursing midwifery and family nurse practitioner programs.

These programs can translate into health services for a great number of Native American residents who receive care at eight New Mexico clinics funded by the federal Indian Health Service. The need is great, laments director Maria Rickert at the Albuquerque Service Unit. “We beat the rest of the population in almost everything—heart disease, diabetes, obesity, alcoholism, suicide. And now cancer is approaching white levels.”

This year, after working with UNM physicians, an Albuquerque man published a practical Spanish dictionary for health professionals. Both Adair and Rothfeld believe such a tool is invaluable. Physicians not fluent in languages of their patients are mandated by law to hire interpreters at their own expense. “Knowing Spanish here also enlarges your perspective and social opportunities,” adds Adair.

Linguistic disparity is only one difficulty for practitioners in the land of enchantment, though. “I don’t think it’s easy to recruit anywhere, but I think it’s harder here,” says England, even though good research facilities seem to be a plus in attracting cardiac specialists.

Many physicians take a financial hit because state administrators were too conscientious about keeping down costs in the past. Today, Medicare payments are based on the old cost structure which, in New Mexico, is lower than most other states. Typically high malpractice premiums compound the dollar discomfort, and a state gross receipts tax adds insult to injury. This tax on services as well as goods is not reimbursed by insurance companies or Medicare.

The good news for hospital-employed physicians like Adair and Rothfeld is that the employer picks up the tab for most of these expenses. Also helpful is a recently passed bill allowing income tax deductions for gross receipts taxes on services involving managed care contracts for negotiated rates of reimbursement. It’s not total exemption, but it is like going from a pain threshold of eight to four.

Nevertheless, there’s still some truth to “the old joke about getting paid in million-dollar sunsets,” England comments wryly.

For Adair, the “sunset” is “one of the nicest climates I’ve ever experienced. This is also one of the nicest places in the sense that it’s got charm and it’s got culture, but the culture isn’t overwhelming.” It’s almost as if he’d read a paean written long ago about the city’s healing powers: “Albuquerque is one of the cities of the west that is so openly, so rampantly healthy, so gloriously deluged with vivifying sunshine and purified with healing breezes that it invites with open arms the sick and ailing to enter its portals.”

Closer to home, and especially appealing to outdoor lovers, a bike trail runs through the entire city along the Rio Grande, which itself is the object of renewed interest from residents. Also near the water is the Albuquerque Biological Park, incorporating a botanical garden and aquarium focusing on fish life as it varies from headwaters to the Gulf of Mexico. The new park complements the venerable 77-year-old zoo not far away.

The Duke City is awash in more “civilized” forms of culture, too, among them art galleries, symphony, chamber music, Broadway shows, and several theaters, including the historic KiMo, a venue for ballet, opera, and Hispanic and contemporary theater. “It’s the most intimate and aesthetically beautiful theater in the state,” says its manager, Craig Rivera. “And [it’s] probably the city’s longest-lasting building still used for its original purpose.”

Major league addicts won’t see Shaquille O’Neal, Bret Favre, or Derek Jeter, but they can watch UNM college sports, the New Mexico Scorpions (pro hockey), New Mexico Storm (pro soccer), and the Albuquerque Isotopes, a Triple A baseball team.

And for true poetry afloat, no self-respecting Albuquerquean ever misses the chance to marvel at a skyful of color during the city’s most famous event, the International Balloon Fiesta. The October event, which includes two magical nighttime light shows, has ‘ballooned’ from 13 participants in 1972 to more than a thousand, some 300 of whom live in the area year-round. The city’s high-flying tradition dates back a century or more, when a local bartender literally got high piloting a “gasbag” 14,000 feet over the center of town. Scientists later figured out why he did so well: The weather, mountain formations, and wind characteristics make this the best place in the world for the sport.

A new event will greet next year’s attendees—the opening of the long-awaited Anderson-Abruzzo International Balloon Museum.

Currently the newest museum on the block is the ¡Explora! Science Center, where children can enjoy learning why wadded-up foil floats in water, how opposing air pressure streams hold floating beach balls in place, and how zeroes and ones are manipulated to make computers “know” the difference between A and Z.

¡Explora! has several companions in an area roughly known as Museum Row, including the Museum of Natural History & Science, the Museum of Art and History, and the National Atomic Museum.

Two other cultural experiences enhance the everyday Native American and Hispanic presence throughout the city. The National Hispanic Cultural Center safeguards that culture’s artistic and performing heritage. The Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, with live presentations and extensive exhibits featuring each of the 19 New Mexico pueblos, offers an introduction to the civilizations that pre-dated the 16th-century Spanish explorers. The pueblo peoples fought off the conquistadors for a long time but eventually came to terms with American settlers. Today, most of the pueblos themselves, from the spectacular “Sky City” of Acoma to Taos in the north, welcome visitors who want to learn about their cultures and view their unique arts. Several of them have added casinos for the bells-and-lights crowd.

Still, not all is hearts and flowers in the Duke City. Life’s persistent question for long-time resident and columnist V.B. Price is: Will what he calls “a city at the end of the world” survive the onslaught of too many newcomers with no commitment to preserving the historic charm and natural wonders of the area? Just as it was considered a frontier zone “remote beyond compare” by 17th-century Spanish bureaucrats in Mexico City, Albuquerque, according to Price, is set in the middle of a true natural wilderness and still geographically isolated from the power centers of the world. This in spite of the fact that the area has been a trade center since the Camino Real was established in the early 1600s, and that outsiders have been rampant for 60 years at Kirtland Air Force Base, the area’s largest employer (6,500 military; 18,000-plus civilians) and for almost as long at the Sandia National Labs.

Fearing the worst—unfettered, homogenizing urban sprawl—Price grieves that Albuquerque has become “a city with amnesia—fascinating past and almost no collective memory.” And he berates city government for lack of leadership and failure to maintain a “unified urban image.” He worries about the great water well in the ground running dry from over-demand, although Gov. Bill Richardson cleared the way in July for Albuquerque to secure its water future at least for the next 50 years by diverting surface water from the Rio Grande. And he weeps over the one-style-fits-all new houses in northwest Rio Rancho, which is home to most of the 5,500 workers “imported” by the more recently arrived Intel Corporation.

Nevertheless, thanks to an energetic former mayor, Jim Baca, some $450 million in public and private money is being pumped into a 10-year rejuvenation plan for architectural gems in Old Town and “New Town.” (New Town is the part of the city built up after the railroad arrived in 1880.) Some 120 new housing units in a restored bank and high school are already occupied, with 180 people on a waiting list to fill soon-to-be-completed apartments in a once-abandoned gymnasium. The facelift also includes restaurants, theaters, shops, offices, five new museums, an expansion of the Albuquerque Art and History Museum, two retail corridors, and Tricentennial Park. “Our mission is to creatively plan, manage and develop downtown Albuquerque into the best mid-sized downtown in the U.S.A.,” says Brian Morris, spokesman for the Downtown Action Team, the group coordinating the work.

If there’s a lack of urban unity, that’s news to Rothfeld, the pediatrician and 29-year-resident. Although he knows doctors who live in such areas as the North Valley and closer to the river or the mountains, and some in bigger, newer homes, he, like Adair, has chosen the university neighborhood, where “I still run into people I know wherever I go,” he says. “In fact, my boys say, ‘Dad, it takes us so long to go shopping because you stop to talk to everybody!’”

“Urban sprawl is a real issue,” says Adair, “but people are verbalizing about not letting it happen. We’ve had some neighborhood fights over bond issues concerning water, and neighborhood meetings on rapid transit issues. I’ve never been anywhere that they have done those things.

“This,” he says with pride, “is a very active community looking forward and not
backward.” g