The Hearst Foundations have awarded a $100,000 grant to the Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine at Quinnipiac University to establish the William Randolph Hearst Endowed Scholarship Fund to support students seeking careers as primary care physicians.
“I am very pleased and appreciative of the gift to our scholarship endowment from The Hearst Foundations,” said Bruce Koeppen, M.D., founding dean of the medical school. "It signifies the foundations’ recognition of the importance of training primary care physicians, and making that training affordable for the students."
The Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine, which is under construction on Quinnipiac’s North Haven Campus, will open in the Fall of 2013 to train primary care physicians, pending accreditation from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education.
The medical school is aiming to become a national model of inter-professional health professions education and improve the way health care is delivered. Medical students at Quinnipiac will be part of a learning environment where they will interact with students from Quinnipiac’s School of Health Sciences and School of Nursing to learn to become effective members of a primary health care team. St. Vincent’s Medical Center of Bridgeport is the medical school’s principal clinical partner. The school also has affiliations with MidState Medical Center of Meriden and Middlesex Hospital of Middletown.
“Quinnipiac is in the unique position to create an institutional environment that will be viewed at a regional and national level as a primary care educational magnet for a broad spectrum of health professions,” Koeppen said.
“We are pleased to be working with Quinnipiac University as it responds to one of the most urgent and underappreciated realities facing our nation in the health care sector," said Hearst Foundations Executive Director Paul Dinovitz. "Launching a medical school with an explicit focus on primary care will help fill the current and growing void with talented, and energetic young physicians, as well as provide a fitting addition to Quinnipiac’s schools of nursing and health sciences.”
The Association of American Medical Colleges projects that by 2020, the country will face a shortage of 45,000 primary care physicians to care for an aging and growing population.
The Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine will have 60 students in its first class. By 2017, that number will grow to 125 students per class, making it Connecticut’s largest medical school.
