Kuwait University established a Health Sciences Centre (HSC) headed by a Vice-Rector in February, 1982.  At present the HSC has five faculties – Medicine, Pharmacy, Dentistry, Allied Health Sciences and Public Health.  Each faculty is headed by a Dean, who works under the aegis of the Vice-Rector, Health Sciences Centre.

The Faculty of Allied Health Sciences and Nursing was established as an independent faculty under the umbrella of the Health Sciences Centre on June 22nd 1982. Prior to that the School of Allied Health and Nursing was part of the Faculty of Medicine. The Faculty of Medicine, which admitted its first undergraduate medical students in 1976, was given the responsibility for training allied health staff by the Ministry of Public Health's Governing Board for Nursing and Para-Medical Education, which recognised that Kuwait's shortage in allied health personnel was at least as great as that in physicians. The Ministry adopted a policy of training staff locally wherever possible because they would have a better knowledge of local circumstances, they could be trained to meet local needs and they would provide a more stable population than expatriate staff.

The Governing Board for Nursing and Para-Medical Education recognised the urgent need for training in Medical Laboratory Technology (renamed Medical Laboratory Sciences in June 1996), Medical Record Science (renamed Health Information Administration in 1985 and renamed Health Informatics and Information Management in 2017), Physical Therapy, Radiologic Sciences and Nursing. Programmes in the Faculty of Medicine in the first four of these fields were approved by the University Council in June 1978 and received their first undergraduates in September 1978. The first Nursing intake was in 1982.

In June l985 the University Council approved the transformation of the five programmes into fully-fledged academic departments. In June 2001, the University Council issued a decree to transfer the Nursing programme to the College of Health Sciences, Public Authority for Applied Education and Training. Students already in the programme continued their studies in Kuwait University. The last cohort of Nursing students graduated from the university in 2004. In the same year, the University Council decreed a name change for the Faulty to Faculty of Allied Health Sciences. With the appointment of staff in 2006, a new department of Occupational Therapy was established. A new department of Hearing and Speech Sciences was recently established and will, it is hoped, have its first intake of students in the near future. The Faculty was initially based in the former premises of the Nursing Institute in the grounds of Sabah Hospital, and later at the university campus at Shuwaikh. The Faculty admits 280 students annually. To cater for increasing numbers of students and staff, the Faculty moved in 2006 to new premises on the Mubarak Al Kabeer Hospital site in Jabriya, where the faculties of Medicine, Pharmacy and Dentistry were already sited.