The Mountain Area Health Education Center (MAHEC) is
celebrating forty years as a medical training center in western North Carolina. With a mission to provide quality healthcare
as the foundation for training physicians, dentists, pharmacists and health
professionals, one of MAHEC’s greatest contributions to WNC are the graduates
who stayed in the region to become family doctors, obstetricians and dentists.
“In four decades we have graduated 436 physicians
who are leaders in primary, ob/gyn and dental care,” said Dr. Jeffery E. Heck,
President and CEO of MAHEC. “Our faculty
instill not only a passion for learning and medical excellence, but a love for
the mountains and the people who live here.
We are particularly proud of our graduates who practice medicine right
here in WNC.”
MAHEC was incorporated
in 1974 to help meet the need for physicians in rural areas of the State. Graduates from rural residency programs are
three times more likely to practice in rural areas than urban residency program
graduates. In the 1970s the North
Carolina General Assembly mandated the UNC Chapel Hill School of Medicine to
increase their student body by fifty percent and 300 new primary care training
positions were added in a statewide “campus without walls.” The Mountain Area Health Education Center
was established with a family medicine residency program to serve a 16 county
region in WNC.
Dr.
James McMillan came to Asheville as a resident in those early years. “It was a frontier back then,” he says.
“You’ve got to keep in mind that when I started primary care, preventative
healthcare was unknown.”
MAHEC
was at the forefront of a burgeoning movement toward primary care, and Dr. McMillan
says the Asheville community embraced MAHEC, its first wave of residents, and
this new
approach.
“The community support was just overwhelming with how much the physicians and
the hospitals and the nurses were just really happy to have us there.”
Dr.
McMillan joined Asheville Family Health Centers which employs ten MAHEC
graduates and has become the largest independent, physician
owned family medicine practice in the state. The Hot Springs Health Program
has seven MAHEC graduates, Mission Medical Associates employs more than 20
MAHEC graduates, and throughout WNC favorite family medicine and obgyn doctors
herald from MAHEC.
MAHEC
trained obstetricians now serve in Buncombe, Haywood, Jackson, Macon, McDowell,
Swain and Transylvania counties. The
Obstetrics and Gynecology Residency program was added in 1992 to meet women’s
health needs, followed by a rural family medicine residency in Hendersonville,
a geriatrics fellowship, dental residency, hospice and palliative care fellowship,
and a sports medicine fellowship will begin in summer 2015.
The combined impact and
strength of MAHEC’s medical education and training programs has improved
quality access to healthcare and changed the supply of physicians in our
region.
“As faculty at MAHEC we
are very committed to the highest quality healthcare, to helping the
underserved, and to teaching residents and students,” says Dr. Blake Fagan,
MAHEC’s Family Medicine Residency Program Director. “Our residents understand the mission to
serve and, as graduates, they are living it in the region.”
In addition to residency
training programs, MAHEC helped establish the Asheville campuses of the UNC
School of Medicine and the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. Over 600 local physicians serve as faculty or
mentors for the next generation of health professionals. MAHEC coordinates this faculty network to
provide residency and medical student training, medical mentoring for high
school students, internships for undergraduates, The Kenan Primary Care Scholars
program for UNC Chapel Hill medical students, and almost 200 medical rotations
for other medical students.
“Access to high
quality healthcare is one of the most significant challenges for rural
communities and MAHEC is important to the future of WNC,” says Dr. Geoff Jones,
Director of MAHEC’s Hendersonville Family Medicine Residency program, “Rural
health training programs will play a key role in supplying the rural workforce
of the future.”
MAHEC will
celebrate its 40th year anniversary on Saturday, September 13th on
the Mary C. Nesbitt Biltmore Campus.
Tickets and information available at 828-771-4203 or Mahec40years@mahec.net.
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