Today
On June 11, NCAFP leaders attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the new Methodist University Cape Fear Valley Health School of Medicine facility in Fayetteville. The ceremony officially opened the new medical school and celebrated its students, leaders, and ambitions to improve the region’s health care. “Together, this will change healthcare outcomes in this region,” said Methodist University President Stanley T. Wearden, Ph.D. “It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen.”
The medical school has been preparing to open for several years, thanks to a partnership between Methodist University and Cape Fear Valley Health. On July 20, it will welcome its first class of medical students.
NCAFP member and Founding Dean Dr. Hershey Bell also summed up the school’s mission beautifully during his speech at the ceremony: “This building represents vision, sacrifice, partnership, generosity, and years of extraordinary work by countless people who believe this community deserves its own medical school. Years from now, people won't remember the square footage of the building or the specifics of the technology, but they'll remember the physician who sat beside them after a devastating diagnosis — the physician who listened, the physician who stayed late, the physician who cared. And that's the purpose of this building.”
Congratulations to Dr. Bell, as well as the school’s Founding Family Medicine Division Head (and past NCAFP president) Dr. Chuck Rich, and all the other leaders who have worked to make this new medical school possible.
The North Carolina Academy of Family Physicians, Inc. (NCAFP) is a nonprofit professional association headquartered in Raleigh which represents over 4,300 family physicians, family medicine residents, and medical students across the state. It is the largest medical specialty association in North Carolina and is a constituent chapter of the American Academy of Family Physicians, based in Leadwood, KS.
