By Kendra Gilchrist
For Charleston Gazette-Mail
West Virginia natives tend to leave the state when a good opportunity elsewhere comes along, Huntington native Gabriel Little said.
In the case of healthcare workers, West Virginia is in need of people who stick around. Little wants to be one of them.
“I don’t want to be one of those guys who climbs the ladder, gets my dream degree, gets my dream job and then leaves,” Little said.
Little, 24, is starting his graduate work at the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine in Lewisburg, which — earlier this summer — welcomed a class of first-year medical students that includes the largest number of West Virginia residents in the school’s history.
WVSOM’s class of 2030 has 210 students, 79 — nearly 38% — of whom call West Virginia home.
WVSOM is the state’s largest medical school and leading producer of physicians who practice in West Virginia, according to the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission.
Recruiting students who live in the state is important because those students are more likely to practice in West Virginia after graduation, WVSOM President James Nemitz said.
“West Virginia is underserved,” Nemitz said. “So, there’s already a need.”
All counties in West Virginia have Health Professional Shortage Area designations for primary care providers by the Health Resources and Services Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
It is WVSOM’s mission to help increase the pool of medical care professionals who serve the state, particularly in the rural areas that are the most underserved. Many of the state’s current physicians are also nearing retirement and new physicians will be needed to take their place, Nemitz said.
“Many of my board members are graduates of the school, served West Virginia, and they’re concerned about who’s gonna take care of their patients when they retire,” Nemitz said.
Little said he is eager to take up that mantle. From growing up in the state to completing his undergraduate studies at Marshall University, Little said he is proud to call West Virginia home and hopes to do so for a long time.
“I do plan on working in the state for the majority of my life, if not all of it,” Little said. “And I knew that Lewisburg was really good at … being a very West Virginia-centered school.”
Little wants to work in the rural areas of the state that need healthcare workers the most. He said he feels that West Virginia has given him so much — a strong community, scholarships during his time at Marshall and in-state tuition at WVSOM — that he wants to give back as much as he can.
“I want to use what they’re giving me here in Lewisburg to help folks and to help out with the disparities,” Little said.
Special programs helped in-state enrollment
WVSOM has utilized several programs and strategies to boost in-state admissions. One of the school’s key pipeline programs is the Pre-Osteopathic Medicine Program, which works with 12 higher education institutions in the state to offer early acceptance to WVSOM upon completion of the program. Nemitz said the introduction of the school’s Master of Science in Biomedical Sciences degree, a nine-month program that prepares students for medical school, also helped attract more in-state students.
What convinced Little to choose WVSOM, however, was the school’s general approach to teaching medicine. Osteopathic medicine covers the entire spectrum of healthcare, taking in the full context of medical issues rather than limiting a view to one specialty. WVSOM teaches the discipline with a focus on empathy and understanding, Little said.
“That was the big thing that got me over here,” Little said, referring to WVSOM. “Their holistic view on healthcare, patient-centered medicine, the more intimate interactions you have with your patients,” Little said.
More about WVSOM
WVSOM was founded as the private Greenbrier College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1972 by osteopathic physicians who recognized a need for doctors in West Virginia’s rural communities, according to its website.
Lewisburg was chosen to be the site of the school because of its central location in the Appalachian region, rural setting and the availability of a 43-acre campus.
The school now employs about 300 people and has a class size of more than 200 new students per year.
Read more from HDMedia, here.
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