Welcome

Putting Service to Society First

At a meeting on May 23, 2023, a small group worked together to begin conceptualizing our new Methodist University Cape Fear Valley Health School of Medicine in Fayetteville, North Carolina. We examined the Methodist University mission which included the words, “truth, justice, virtue, and love” and spoke to “developing whole persons who will contribute substantially and creatively to the professions and to civic life”. We examined the Cape Fear Valley Health System mission of “providing exceptional health care for all our patients”. We talked in detail about the need to produce more physicians for southeastern North Carolina who will solve the problem of access to healthcare in our region and improve health outcomes. We expanded our thinking to include not only those patients who interacted with the formal health care system, but also those who sought care outside the health system through their places of worship, their families, friends and the media. We concluded that our medical school will be one that teaches students to “care for everyone, everywhere”. From that discussion, a mission that honored Methodist University, Cape Fear Valley Health System and every person in our region was born:

“The mission of the Methodist University Cape Fear Valley Health School of Medicine is to prepare our graduates to be socially accountable, community-engaged, evidence-based, compassionate, equity-focused physician leaders who will contribute to the mitigating health disparities and improving health outcomes in southeastern North Carolina or wherever they may practice.”

It is the honor of my lifetime to serve as the Founding Dean for the Methodist University Cape Fear Valley Health School of Medicine. Together with an extraordinary leadership team, a committed faculty and staff, the backing of North Carolina’s most diverse university, an eight-hospital, 1000-physician health care system, and a community that eagerly supports the development of the medical school, we are transforming southeastern North Carolina. On Sept. 10, 2024, we celebrated the groundbreaking of a new $65 million, 125,000 square foot state-of-the-art building on the southwestern corner of Cape Fear Valley Medical Center that will be home to our students and faculty.

We are developing a highly innovative, cutting-edge curriculum featuring the latest in learning technology. And our students will participate in health care throughout our eight-county region from their first year in medical school. Health systems science and population health will be taught together with foundational medical sciences and clinical sciences to produce holistic, competent and caring practitioners.

Finally, as a family physician, an educator, a husband and a parent, it is my intention to ensure that every student who graduates from Methodist University Cape Fear Valley Health School of Medicine will put service to society first and always keep the words of Francis Peabody, MD close to their hearts: “For the secret to the care of the patient is in caring for the patient”.

Welcome to our medical school.