The New York Institute of Technology, College of Osteopathic Medicine at Arkansas State University (NYIT) has been operating in Jonesboro since 2016.
At a recent meeting of Batesville Rotarians, Casey Pearce, NYIT’s associate director of external relations and marketing, updated the club on how the medical school is progressing.
Arkansas, according to Pearce, is generally in the bottom five states in health outcomes and does not have enough physicians with about 35% of them being over 60 years of age. So over ten years ago Arkansas State University began seriously exploring starting a medical school. Eventually, it became clear that it would be much more efficient to partner with another school rather than start from the ground up. The result is NYIT.
NYIT is located east of Manhattan on Long Island with about 8,000 undergraduate students. It has operated a medical school there since 1977.
Where medical schools turn out MDs or Doctors of Medicine, osteopathic schools turn out DOs or Doctors of Osteopathic Medicine. According to Pearce, the training is the same. There are four years of undergraduate and four years of medical school with three-to-seven-year residencies of special training. DOs are more likely to practice general medicine like family practice and internal medicine.
MDs, generally speaking, treat symptoms of disease whereas DOs look at the whole person, the interconnectedness of body, mind, spirit, and what other factors may be contributing to issues, Pearce said.
The Jonesboro school has 115 students per year. The first class was in 2016. There are about 3,000 applications for the 115 positions each year. About 30% of students are from Arkansas.
The NYIT in Arkansas has about 315 graduates in residency partnering with hospitals across the state. About 20% will stay in Arkansas although that percentage is improving. The main problem has been a lack of residency opportunities.
One interesting NYIT note: After 16 years, Barbara Ross-Lee, D.O., retired as a vice president of NYIT in 2017. According to Pearce, the interim president at the time noted Ross-Lee had advanced the field of osteopathic medicine for nearly 40 years and blazed trails for women, minorities, and underserved communities plus “successfully led the charge to open a second campus of NYIT in Arkansas.”
Dr. Ross-Lee is the sister of Diana Ross of Motown and Supremes fame, Pearce said.
For more information about NYIT’s Jonesboro campus, click here.
Article by Butch Ketz, White River Now
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