Over 100 Years of Healthy Futures
The University of Minnesota Twin Cities approved creation of the University Health Service in spring 1918. It was a prescient action. By September, when the clinic opened, the Twin Cities reported its first case of the Great Influenza, the world’s deadliest epidemic.
100 Years of Firsts
1918 - University Health Service founded to “protect the health of students and prevent disease.”
1920s - Dental and mental health services added.
1936 - Ruth Boynton, MD, named health director. Dr. Boynton was the first, and for many years, only woman in the country directing a co-educational health service. She served until 1961.
1940s - First college health center to require tuberculosis testing on campus.
1954 - Hires first full-time college health educator in the country.
1975 - Renamed in honor of Dr. Ruth Boynton. The same year, the University required all students have hospitalization insurance, allowing Boynton to develop a health insurance program for students guaranteeing access to health care while enrolled.
1979 - First college health center with a Quality Assurance program, and first college health service and first clinic in the Twin Cities to be accredited by the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care. Boynton has maintained accreditation ever since.
1989 - Boynton trains students to be health educators for general health, sexual health, reproductive health and nutrition.
1995 - Conducts first population-based health assessment of university students. The survey became the model for the National College Health Assessment developed by the American College Health Association. Data from Boynton’s College Student Health Survey informed important public health actions, including:
- Examination of credit card debt among college students by the U.S. General Accounting Office (1998);
- Inclusion of college students as a priority for Minnesota state tobacco prevention and cessation efforts (1999).
2001 - Partially self-funded Student Health Benefit Plan with no pre-existing condition exclusions offered to students.
2007 - Opens first convenience care clinic, Gopher Quick Clinic, in a college health center.
2017 - One of the first college health services in the country to offer Transgender Health.
Boynton: Still a College Health Leader
Today, Boynton Health is one of the most comprehensive college student health services in the nation. It serves as a model for our health care system because it is responsive to the community, combines medical care and public health, and has a developmental approach to health.