NYITCOM at A-State Receives Grant to Establish Medical Education Consortium

NYITCOM at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro (A-State) has received a $200,000 grant from the Delta Regional Authority to extend medical education in northeast Arkansas and southeast Missouri Delta regions. The Consortium for Medical Education in the Delta (C-MED) is the first Delta community-based clinical education consortium with medical and health institutions.

C-MED will provide clinical education for third- and fourth-year osteopathic medical students from NYITCOM at A-State and initiate a Graduate Medical Education application process to help establish medical residencies in community hospitals in the Delta region that otherwise couldn’t support residency programs on their own.

“An organized medical education delivery system does not exist in the medically underserved communities of the Delta but one is profoundly needed to produce new physicians to live and practice in these areas,” said Barbara Ross-Lee, D.O., NYIT vice president for health sciences and medical affairs and founding dean of NYITCOM at A-State. In fact, it has been shown that a high percentage of physicians will practice where they train, added Ross-Lee.

The program will create approximately 30 new residency slots and 10 new  generalist physicians in the region annually. Five hospitals will participate in the program—four underserved and economically distressed communities in Arkansas and one in Missouri are being considered as potential clinical education and residency sites.

Read more about the grant.