SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University | 23,622 followers on LinkedIn. Dedication to serving the people of Brooklyn through its three-fold mission of education, research, and patient care. | Formally known as The State University of New York Health Science Center at Brooklyn—but better known to our patients and Brooklyn neighbors as SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University — we are older than the Brooklyn Bridge. We trace our roots back to 1860, when a school of medicine was founded at the Long Island College Hospital. The new college’s faculty revolutionized medical education in this country by bringing the teaching of medicine to the hospital bedside, thus rejecting the idea that physicians should be trained exclusively in university lecture halls.