Fayetteville State University board authorizes study on opening medical school

Editor’s note: This article has been updated for clarification.

Fayetteville State University would have its own medical school as well as a program to train doctors to serve in rural areas of the state if proposals discussed by the board of trustees on Thursday come to fruition.

Under one proposal, FSU would partner with a Nashville, Tennessee-based medical school to offer pre-med training for doctors who would practice in rural areas.

In a called meeting on Thursday, the board of trustees approved a resolution that encourages a partnership between FSU and Meharry Medical College, the nation’s oldest historically black medical school.

The resolution says that “to the extent practical,” the partnership would include a “rural doctor training track program.”

The board also approved the creation of a committee to research the feasibility of establishing a medical school in the southeastern part of the state, with trustees saying they want it to be at FSU.

The proposal must now be approved by the University of North Carolina System Board of Governors.

Under the proposed affiliation with Meharry Medical College, which the FSU board could approve without Board of Governors approval, students would undergo the first three years of pre-med training at FSU, earning a bachelor’s degree.

Then, students would attend three years of medical school at Meharry. For the last three years of residency training, they could choose to finish at Meharry or another university.

“This would be a new, innovative program that many institutions are trying now to get more physicians on the front lines,” said Pat Matthews-Juarez, vice president of Meharry’s office of faculty affairs.

She told the FSU board in the meeting broadcast via Zoom that the program trims about a year off a standard medical doctor training program.

Graduates would be obligated to serve in rural areas.

Interim FSU Chancellor Peggy Valentine said more than 90% of the university’s students come from the southeastern part of the state and from rural, low-income communities where primary care doctors are sorely needed.

“And most of our students stay right here in North Carolina after graduation,” Valentine said.

Matthews-Jaurez said doctors are needed for life-and-death medical care in southeastern North Carolina, which has a high rate of deaths from conditions such as heart disease and diabetes.

“The (Interstate) 95 was considered the stroke alley of the country for such a long time, and lots of that is tied to the inability to attract and maintain our young people as physicians,” she said. “The excitement here would be to grow your own cadre of young people (to become doctors) who have choice but who have an opportunity to make a decision to work and serve in a community in which they care about, a community in which they have grown up.”

Board member Glenn Adams asked what type of financial aid could be offered to students who enroll in the program.

Matthews-Juarez said she would like students early on to commit to practicing in health centers that qualify under the National Health Service Corps, which could eliminate tens of thousands of dollars a year in annual student loan debt.

“It is staggering that students are coming out with $300,000 worth of debt and are not really able to enjoy their lives,” she said. “They worry about getting married. They worry about buying a house, and they see no end in sight.”

Valentine said in an interview after the meeting that the agreement with Meharry Medical College could be a first step toward positioning FSU to get a medical school.

But she emphasized that a medical school is more of a long-term project.

“There are a lot of hoops we have to jump through to become a medical school, but this is like the first step in determining the feasibility for the future,” she said. “But for right now this first phase is just to help (Meharry) serve as a feeder and then as time goes on, with available resources, we can explore another phase.”

Valentine said FSU enrolls a number of students with high grades who could qualify to go on to medical school, a path that has not been emphasized at FSU in the past.

“We have all these bright students who come to our university, especially from early college,” she said. “I just think we have a great opportunity to steer some of these students into the field of medicine.”

Valentine said there is another benefit to the university of having a medical students: The state funds universities much more to train students in that field than in others. Trustees have complained about FSU being short-changed in state funding compared to other universities.

Trustee Jonathan Charleston got the ball rolling on the proposed affiliation with Meharry, which would be non-exclusive, meaning FSU could enter into similar agreements with other universities, including those in North Carolina.

Charleston said in an interview after the meeting that several FSU board members told him they would like more medical training on campus. He said he then spoke with a business associate who had served on the board at Meharry Medical College, who then contacted Matthews-Jaurez.

“From my perspective, as a member of the board of trustees, I believe that we were appointed to bring transformative programs to Fayetteville State that can have tremendous impacts on the students, our city and this region,” Charleston said.

Staff writer John Henderson can be reached at jhenderson@fayobserver.com or at 486-3596.