The Brody School of Medicine acts as an economic engine for the eastern North Carolina and the entire state contributing an estimated 14 billion dollar impact. The medical school, heart center and dental school at ECU have significantly changed primary care in the area, in terms of both availability and quality, and will continue to reform rural health care over the next 50 years. However, while the availability of quality health care has improved, many challenges still remain when it comes to keeping good physicians in the area.
In the early 1960s, concern about the deficit of modern medical care available in eastern North Carolina began to grow. A groups of leaders in the region proposed that a medical school be established at what was then East Carolina College. Since 1977, when the first class of 28 students enrolled in the four-year School of Medicine at ECU, the institution has grown considerably in its teaching and research and has brought an important resource to the area.
According to the school’s website, during the development of the Brody School of Medicine at ECU, the legislature set forth a three-fold mission for the institution: to increase the supply of primary care physicians to serve the state, to improve health status of citizens in eastern North Carolina, and to enhance the access of minority and disadvantaged students to a medical education. So far, they are fulfilling each of those goals.
Today, in its partnership with University Health Systems of Eastern Carolina and regional physicians, the school is the educational centerpiece of one of North Carolina's largest and most productive academic medical centers. Over the past 10 years has worked to improve the available health care in Eastern NC and to retain talented medical practitioners in Eastern NC.
In the school’s 2009 graduating class, more than half of the medical students will go into primary care residencies. Of the 62 students participating, 13, or 21 percent, are entering family medicine residencies, 8 are entering some type of internal medicine residency, 6 students are entering pediatric residency programs, and 7 are entering obstetrics and gynecology. The Brody School of Medicine at ECU and Pitt County Memorial Hospital will be home to 12 class members. Thirty graduates will stay in North Carolina.
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