Column: University and health leaders welcome medical school and better health care for all

You could feel the anticipation of this day as health care and education leaders joined with a “who’s who” of Cumberland County along Village Drive, where the Methodist University Cape Fear Valley Health School of Medicine soon enough is scheduled to become a part of the landscape behind Cape Fear Valley Medical Center. 

Once, Village Baptist Church stood here, Chaplain Cynthia Brasher said, reminding us of blessed ground. Soon, it will be a medical school of physicians and health care students, who will call this property home in the name of better health for this community and southeastern North Carolina. 

“Bless this new foundation,” Brasher, corporate director for pastoral care at CFVH, prayed Tuesday at the groundbreaking ceremony for the twin buildings of academic health care education. “Bless those who will come here and those who will teach here looking to our future with hope and love.”

‘Historic occasion’

Stanley Wearden would be among those offering welcome. 

“This really a historic occasion, and I am privileged to be a part of it,” the 71-year-old university president said. “This is a collective and huge project, and it has a lot of people behind it who believe in it deeply. This is not about Methodist University alone, without Mike Nagowski [chief executive officer of the health system] and Cape Fear Valley Health. I am grateful to Mike and the Cape Fear Valley Health spirit. Today, we’re taking a step on an amazing journey.”

Dr. Rakesh Gupta, the university board of trustees chairman, would echo Wearden’s words.

“This is a dream,” said the 68-year-old retired gastroenterologist and chief of medicine from 1996 to 1998 at the medical center. “I bear witness to Stanley Wearden and Mike Nagowski shaking hands in November of 2022 for this to go forward. It’s a foundation of better health and better health outcomes. Thank you for letting me play a small part in this beautiful journey.”

Wearden joined with Nagowski on Feb. 27, 2023, in announcing plans for the five-story, 127,476  square feet, 200-room building. The health system will cover the $60 million construction cost, according to university and CFVH officials, and the university will lease the buildings over 20 years. Rodgers Builders and McMillan Pazdan Smith Architecture, according to the university, is the builder. 

“We are jumping out of our shoes,” Nagowski, 58, said Tuesday. “This project is going to not only physically transform the Cape Fear Valley Health campus, but more importantly, it will transform our region. We’re going to be able to recruit and retain desperately needed physicians, especially in rural areas like southeastern North Carolina. This school of medicine will keep graduates and attract high-level doctors who want to join an academic health system. The medical school will be state of the art.”

The school, Nagowski says, will play a significant role in reducing what he has described previously as “doctor desert” in the Cape Fear Region to include Cumberland, Bladen, Columbus, Harnett, Hoke, Robeson, Sampson and Scotland counties. Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that 39% of physicians who graduated from medical school in North Carolina remain in the state and 67% of physicians who graduated from medical school and finished medical residency in North Carolina remain in the state. 

And Nagowski’s prediction for the school’s impact was not lost on Dr. Franklin Clark III, a retired thoracic surgeon and current chairperson of the school of medicine.

“It was 1978 when I came back here to practice,” Clark said. “I thought there should be a medical school here. We will train doctors and serve people in southeastern North Carolina who have not been served. This is going to be a top-notch school.”

Clark is among six who have pledged $1 million toward a $12 million capital campaign, according to CityView’s previous reporting. Others are Norwood and Mary Lynn Bryan; Ralph and Linda Huff; Murray and Nancy Duggins; Dr. Wes and Lucy Jones; and Will Gillis.

“This is going to be so much more than brick and mortar,” said Jimmy Keefe, a member of the Cumberland Board of County Commissioners and vice chairperson of the Cape Fear Valley Health Board of Trustees. “This is where people can give back to their fellow man. It’s a great day for Methodist University, Cape Fear Valley Health and Cumberland County.”

First class anticipated for 2026

Dr. Hershey Bell was named founding dean of the school in May of 2023, and he was like a kid Tuesday who couldn’t get his hands on the shovel fast enough for the ceremonial groundbreaking.

“Today, we’re celebrating the groundbreaking of not just any medical school,” said Bell, 66, a family physician who received his M.D. from the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine and completed his residency education at the University of Toronto and Duke University. “It’s our medical school, Fayetteville’s medical school, Cumberland County’s medical school and the entire Southeast North Carolina region’s medical school.” 

The first class of medical students, according to the university, is anticipated in the fall of 2026, pending accreditation approval by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges. (For a breakdown of the accreditation process, read Report for America corps member Morgan Casey’s report from the groundbreaking ceremony.)

“It will be the greatest honor of my career to introduce the first class when they arrive,” Bell said. “They will graduate to become our physicians. It will be a school of our region by and for the people of our region. It will be our medical students, and our future physicians.”

Bill Kirby Jr. can be reached at billkirby49@gmail.com or 910-624-1961.

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