The school was founded in 1946 as the 76th medical school in the country and in the fall of 1947 admitted the first class with 50 medical students. It is a leader in primary care, family medicine, biomedical research, experimental therapy, clinical treatments, and academic medicine. In May 2013, it was announced that UW Medicine and
PeaceHealth were coming together in a "strategic affiliation." In 2023, the University of Washington School of Medicine announced that it, along with other medical schools such as Harvard Medical School, the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia, the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and Stanford Medical School, would no longer contribute data to the U.S. News & World Report for medical school rankings. In November 2023, Tim Dellit was named CEO of UW Medicine. On May 9, 2025, the United States'
Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced the termination of over $23.84 million in contracts between the U.S. federal government and the University of Washington School of Medicine, which were designed to fund research on the impacts of
sexually transmitted infections. These contracts were terminated
by an unknown employee of DOGE, who worked under the
pseudonym "HHSAHAYNES". == WWAMI ==