Cleveland State, NEOMED program to focus on urban primary care

A medical education partnership between Cleveland State University and Northeast Ohio Medical University (NEOMED) is set to kick off this fall with the goal of producing more primary care doctors in urban neighborhoods.

Students in the program will begin at Cleveland State (CSU) and then move on to clinical study at NEOMED, which until recently was known as the Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy, or NEOUCOM.

CSU president Ronald Berkman told The Plain Dealer the program is an “extraordinary partnership.”

“It is not only a chance for our students to get into medical school, but an opportunity for us to design a curriculum that reflects how you want to train a primary care physician who would operate in an urban environment,” he said.

Under a state budget proposal, 35 students per year in the program would move on from CSU to enroll in NEOMED. Up to 10 percent of those students would be eligible for scholarships that cover the full cost of tuition in exchange for a commitment to work five years in the city.

The seeds of the CSU-NEOMED collaboration were planted about a year ago when a committee representing the two schools recommended that the medical school expand to include CSU, The Plain Dealer reported.

NEOMED is in the midst of implementing a new strategic plan that’s involved splitting the jobs of president and dean of medicine, and hiring its first-ever dean of graduate studies. The university is also planning to construct a new $42 million, 77,000-square-foot research facility.