(lively music) - Welcome to "Forum 360" with its global outlook and local view.

I'm Ardith Keck.

Since 1973, there is a medical school in rural Northeast Ohio, which was called Northeast Ohio Universities College of Medicine, or NEOUCOM.

With me today is the president of that college, Dr. John Langell, who now president of NEOMED, as the university is called today.

Why the change and what's happening there?

Are they training doctors?

Are they training anyone else?

It's an interesting story.

Welcome Dr. Langell.

- Thank you, Ardith, it's a pleasure to be here today.

- Thank you.

NEOMED, as I said, was originally called NEOUCOM.

Why?

- So nearly 50 years ago, the state saw to it to start up a public college of medicine.

And the area that was most underserved relative to having its own public college of medicine was Northeast Ohio.

So this was a political issue because we had so many great universities, that we needed one, not three.

So this was a way to serve Kent State University, to serve Youngstown State University, and the University of Akron.

So initially, we were the medical school that was housed in Rootstown, Ohio to serve those three universities.

- Okay, so it's in Rootstown, Ohio, now that's really rural, and aren't most medical schools situated right at the hospital in the city?

- They are, and we're not as rural as we used to be, but certainly when the college of medicine was built, it was a piece of farmland before it started.

We're really not too far away from the bigger cities.

18 minute-drive to Akron, maybe 30 minutes to Youngstown, and closer to an hour away from Cleveland.

But over time, it's evolved.

The city is developing, although it's still called a township.

The purpose for it really was to be in an epicenter surrounded by Kent, Youngstown State, and the University of Akron.

And initially, the intent was that this was going to be a school that was creating primary care physicians to serve the local, very rural communities in the area.

So it made sense for us to be right in that location.

We also don't have our own health system.

We rely on other health systems in the area.

The intent wasn't to come in and compete with really great programs that existed, but to really be an adjunct to them and to leverage those community-based hospitals to train our future clinicians in the areas where they would eventually practice.

- So you are training doctors?

- We are training doctors and much, much more now.

- Okay, and the more, I want to ask you about.

You got other degrees that NEOMED confers.

What are they?

- That's true.

So NEOMED now has seven formal degree programs and two certificate programs.

But our formal degree programs, unlike the other 13 public universities in the state of Ohio, are all graduate level.

So doctoral level programs and masters.

We have a PhD program training biomedical scientists, a Pharm.D.

program, creating doctors of pharmacy, at the medical school, which creates doctors of medicine.

But we also have a masters in public health, a masters in leadership and health systems sciences, a masters of the fundamentals of medicine.

We have a masters in anesthesia, and we have a global health certificate program, a masters in medical ethics, and we're continuing to expand and grow.

- Wow, (chuckles) that's quite a lot.

Are the degrees interrelated?

In other words, can one graduate from NEOMED with multiple degrees?

- Yes.

And in fact, that's by design.

So one of our big focuses right now is not just producing great clinicians, that should be a given, but we want to create clinicians for the future who can transform healthcare.

It's part of our transformational leaders campaign.

So we really want them to have the skillset not to just practice medicine but to deliver medicine in a more cost-effective, more accessible, and in a better way.

So you can come in and do the masters in fundamentals of medicine program, is a five year pathway through medical school, or pharmacy college.

You can do the same thing with our leadership program, which is to create future leaders in America to transform healthcare.

We actually have MD PhD pathways and multiple other masters pathways so that when you leave, there's something really unique about your talent and your skillset so that you can serve the community in a better way.

- Has the mission changed?

- It has.

While we've maintained that focus on serving Ohio, that's really critical for us, that's part of our for Ohio and from Ohio mantra that we use at the university, but we just underwent a brand new strategic plan two years ago.

And our mission now is it's that NEOMED harnesses diversity, innovation, and collaboration to create transformative leaders and improve health through education, discovery, and service.

So it's not just about primary care doctors anymore.

It's about great physicians, great pharmacists, great public health experts, and great scientists who can get out and really transform our healthcare landscape.

But we've never really lost that focus.

44% of our College of Medicine graduates last year went into a primary care field, and almost 60% of 'em stay and serve the communities in Ohio.

That number is even greater for our College of Pharmacy.

- My physician is a NEOMED or NEOUCOM graduate.

So, and I'm sure that there are many, many people in Akron who can say that, so.

- That's absolutely right, and we're confident you're in good hands knowing that the background of that physician is from NEOMED.

- True, true.

Do the students live on campus?

- A good majority of them do.

You mentioned NEOUCOM, the former name of the institution.

When that existed, most of our students didn't live nearby because there was no campus housing.

We now have a beautiful facility.

It's called the village, and we have housing for over 400 students and private apartments right on our campus.

- Ooh, I had no idea it was that many, mm.

- Yeah, I'm sure, because of the fact that students, they may have actually lived either in the other communities, Kent, or Akron, or Youngstown, because there was nothing in Rootstown.

But it's very handy, I'm sure, to be able to live on campus - Much more convenient.

And we're working on really building out the social and wellness aspects on campus for those students.

That they have more than just an apartment, but a place to live and to learn in our same location.

Especially during their first two years.

- Hm-mm, hm-mm.

The first two years, they're not learning a lot of medicine, or they are?

- They are.

The first two years have a really heavy foundation in the basic sciences, understanding anatomy, physiology, immunology, drug delivery.

But even in the very, very early days, unlike when I went to medical school, we're already teaching them how to interact with patients, how to develop that rapport, that bedside manner, understanding the interactions and the complexities of delivering care to a diverse population of patients, and just being better at those social aspects of medicine rather than here's your medication or there's a surgery I'm prescribing for you.

- Oh boy, I think most of our audience would say that is important.

And I certainly feel that way.

You're relatively new to NEOMED.

Where did you come from?

- I've been at NEOMED for three years now.

- Ooh.

- Previously, I was at the University of Utah.

I spent 13 years there in a number of different positions, both as a surgeon, as a leader in medical education, and then helping run the health system, both at the university's health system itself as well as the VA Medical Center.

- Your degrees are impressive, and I'm wondering, why did you get all those degrees?

- I see degrees as an opportunity to formally learn new materials.

And it's a validation that you put in the effort and you went through the assessments to show that you have that knowledge base.

The reality is you use them in your daily job to be better at what you do.

We're all here as servants to the community.

And I see myself as a servant leader to the university.

So having an MBA provided me better leadership expertise.

And really quite importantly, a better understanding of budgeting and how to be financially fluent in running a university to keep it financially sustainable.

In addition to the degrees that I have that were based in science and in the delivery of medicine.

- Mm, fantastic.

Everybody knows what a doctor and a pharmacist do but what does an MPH graduate do?

Are there places that an MPH graduate can go if they don't have an MD with it?

- There certainly is.

In fact, I would say that that has really been highlighted even more with the global pandemic that's taken place.

These are professionals who better understand how to create broad changes in the community for a population that affect more than the individual patient that as a physician I might treat.

In fact, our biggest impact in public health has been in those larger measures, clean water, clean air, access to healthcare within systems rather than the individual being prescribed a medication or being given lifestyle changes.

So MPHs tend to work in the government setting, tend to work within health systems and understanding population health.

And many of them act as educators and scientists who look at the data and find better ways to care for full communities.

- Mm, you're right, and masters in public health has certainly been shown with the pandemic to be an important part of the health scene.

What about a PhD graduate?

You've got lots of those.

- We do.

So our PhD graduates, they don't just go into academia anymore, which was traditionally becoming a research scientist whose laboratory work is furthering the betterment of our understanding of healthcare problems or biologic processes and educating.

But many of them now also go off into industry and they help with the development of new drugs, or new vaccines, or new medical devices.

Some of them will actually attain the business skills necessary to help perform better at health systems.

And some will move on to go into the government areas of healthcare delivery and and delivery of grants through the NIH, and other pathways to support new knowledge acquisition, and improve healthcare for the future.

- And we've certainly seen the importance of vaccines with the pandemic, so.

Here we go.

I'm with Dr. John Langell, sorry about that who is president of NEOMED, University College of Medicine.

And we are talking about NEOMED as a university, and what it does.

This is Ardith Keck.

And I'm wondering what do you see for NEOMED five to 10 years down the road?

- So NEOMED's focus is really on serving our community and we've got a pretty defined mission focus, which is graduate health sciences education.

Our goal is to be really good at the delivery of that educational focus, and creating professional experts to serve our community.

And I think we do that very, very well.

Higher education is in a difficult spot right now, just like healthcare delivery is.

And we need to be better at creating a financially-sustainable enterprise.

So for five to 10-year period, we've really focused on how do we do that well?

How do we eliminate waste from our system?

How do we ensure ultra-high quality, ultra-high value educational programming and research at the institution?

And I think we've done that very, very well to date.

Now we're reaching out to our community partners and we're trying to figure out what's next.

What do you see your biggest need for from workforce development?

How can we better serve the community?

And what does that look like in the five to 10-year span, so that we can plan in advance for creating programming to help be able to address those workforce needs?

And this is a really critical time.

The pandemic had a massive impact on our health systems in this country, major financial losses.

But I think right now the bigger issue is loss of workforce.

20 to 25% of all healthcare providers have left the field.

And our really great health systems are scrambling to get individuals in there to deliver care to the patients.

And that's where we come in.

- Do you have any projections about areas that the university's not involved in right now but would certainly be, you would like it to be?

- I do, two of the big needs that are not well addressed right now in the state of Ohio are oral health.

In fact, the federal government designates areas called health profession shortage areas.

And 77 of Ohio's 88 counties are designated as shortage areas for dental care.

This is especially a big impact for those who are under-resourced and underserved.

The Medicaid population, for instance.

So we have a mal-distribution of location of dentists within the state, and we also have a shortage of dentists within the state.

So we're currently looking at the opportunity to create a dental college in Northeast Ohio.

There are only two in the state.

One of those is a great institution in Cleveland, but it's a private organization that has a different mission.

So about 80% of their students, or close to 80%, are out of state or out of country.

And then we have Ohio State, which is primarily focused on creating workforce for Ohio, where about 80% of their students are in state, with the intent that they will hopefully stay and practice in state.

So we see a need to pursue that.

I'm working with my board of trustees right now, going through the exercise of understanding what the need is and what the business model would be.

And we're going to make a decision on that very, very soon.

The other area that we're really interested in helping to address is the crisis around mental healthcare delivery.

We have over 11 million people in the state of Ohio.

And pre-pandemic, we had just a little over 1200 psychiatrists.

If we extrapolate and say about 20% of that workforce has left, now we're down to close to a thousand.

And it's an aging population.

So we're working right now with our legislators with the Ohio Department of Higher Education and the Ohio Department of Health to try and create a new workforce to address the current shortage, as well as deal with the catastrophic problem of substance abuse, opioid addiction, and suicide within the state.

- Wow.

Well, do you consider that your legacy when you, hopefully not very soon, leave the university?

- I think my legacy for the university is to create a university that's recognized for its excellence in creating transformational leaders and serving the communities of Ohio through smart expansion and an ability to be seen by our students and our communities as a high-value organization that's thriving and growing and serving the needs of the local communities.

- Worthy goal.

What service to the community does NEOMED provide?

- Oh, we provide service in a lot of areas.

We have our student force who has created the SOAR Clinic.

So the SOAR Clinic is our student-run free clinic.

We deliver free healthcare to those in need in Portage County and beyond.

It's been recognized numerous times at the state level as the number one free clinic in the state of Ohio, and has achieved the highest level, which is gold status with the federal recognition programs.

It's continuing to grow, it does amazing work.

Our students during the pandemic reached out and helped vaccinate thousands of individuals across Northeast Ohio.

We had a talented group of students who came together with teams from Kent State and we worked on a pandemic emergency plan for out-of-hospital care for crises.

We work in providing food to those who are under-resourced.

And I could go on probably for a good hour, all the different programs.

Of the 100+ student organizations within NEOMED, every one of them has a requirement for community service, and they all do it very, very well.

- Wonderful, wonderful.

If I said there's more to creating a healthy population than treating patients, would you agree?

- Oh, I completely agree, yes.

I think it starts with the very early stages of life, and educating people about healthy lifestyles, smart choices, things as simple as wearing a seatbelt.

There's so much we can do from a broader population perspective.

By the time we're treating the individual, that means prevention has failed.

And we're now having to deal with the disease process or the infection that's effected the individual.

- Is NEOMED still a six-year school?

- So, the college of medicine was traditionally a six-year program, that was a way to work with the initial partner universities in its founding.

That has gone away.

And in fact, that went away prior to my arrival.

The leadership of the college of medicine saw challenges as our new generation of students were expected to learn so much more.

And the amount of data that we have in medicine is growing exponentially.

Six years wasn't enough.

The average student was taking eight years to get through the program.

And often under a bit of stress, trying to get there in six, and not feeling like they were completing the program as rapidly as they would've liked.

So, it's mostly an eight-year program, but we still have guaranteed spots for our partner universities, which includes Youngstown State, Kent State, University of Akron, now Cleveland State University.

And Hiram, as well as a few others.

But we are now our own standalone university.

So we work in the region as partners.

But the six-year program has gone by the wayside.

- It was kind of interesting because I didn't think there were very many schools that had a six-year program.

So they entered medical school right from high school and stayed at their own university for a short period of time.

And then essentially graduated to come to medical school.

You do treat patients, you have said, and you do research, and that is a strength of the NEOMED at this point.

- It is a strength.

There's a number of institutions that rank you based on a variety of different parameters.

One of those is the Blue Ridge Institute.

Although we're relatively small, when you look at our peer group, we're near the very top for federal research grant funding.

We have six research-focused areas that are considered, we are considered national leaders in those areas.

Neurodegenerative diseases, hearing research, cardiovascular medicine, health services research, metabolism, diabetes, and obesity.

So we're really good in some key areas.

And that's where we placed our focus.

We've mostly delivered care through our health system partners, but for the first time in our nearly 50 years of existence, NEOMED opened up its own healthcare arm.

It's purely focused on substance abuse and primary care.

And we've opened up a nine-patient clinic on our campus to serve the community.

At the same time, Summa Healthcare has opened up urgent care, and has nine subspecialty clinics on the NEOMED campus also.

So we have expansion going on across our main campus, and we're building stronger programs in the community.

- Wonderful, wonderful.

I know there are physicians in the Akron area, which I'm familiar with, who are proud to say that they're on the faculty of NEOMED.

And I think that is probably true in Kent and the other universities, Youngstown as well.

It's been a pleasure speaking with you today, Dr. Langell, and I thank you for coming to "Forum 360" to talk about NEOMED.

This is Ardith Keck, host of "Forum 360" with its global outlook and its local view.

(lively music) Thank you.

- Thank you, Ardith.

It was a pleasure.

(lively music continues) - [Narrator] "Forum 360" is brought to you by John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Akron community Foundation, Hudson Community Television, The Rubber City Radio Group, Shaw Jewish Community Center of Akron, Blue Green, Electric Impulse Communications, and "Forum 360" supporters.