A delegation of leaders from the AHC recently returned from a trip to India to meet with their counterparts and establish connections between their respective programs in the health sciences.

However, collaborations between the University of Minnesota’s health science programs and universities in Asia have a long history. In 1954 the U of M began such a partnership with Seoul National University to provide technical and advisory support for educational programs and administrative organization in medicine, nursing, public health, and veterinary medicine. The project with Seoul National University ran for seven years until 1961. The benefits of the project are still evident today through the AHC’s continued outreach and partnership with other international institutions.

To learn more about the project with Seoul National University, see “Korea – A New Venture in International Medical Education” by Dr. N. L. Gault, Jr. (then Assistant Dean, College of Medical Sciences) from the November 1961 edition of the Medical Bulletin.

On October 23, 2007, Dr. John Verby, the founder of the Rural Physician Associate Program, passed away.

Dr. Verby was a member of the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health from his appointment in 1969 until his retirement in 1993.

Dr. Verby, a graduate of Carlton College and the University of Minnesota’s Medical School, served as a lieutenant in the Army Medical Corps in Korea and had a private practice from 1949 to 1969 before coming to the University.

Dr. Verby was acting head for the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health from 1970-1971 and then became the first director for the Rural Physician Associate Program after developing and implementing the idea.

The document below is a press release from 1975 that highlights the program then entering its fifth year and quotes Dr. Verby in regards to the program’s successes.

A recent article in the Star Tribune highlighted a new program aimed at diversifying medical schools in Minnesota by encouraging minority, immigrant, and rural undergraduate students to become doctors. The program, “Minnesota’s Future Doctors,” hopes these students will apply to medical school, specialize in primary care, and ultimately stay in Minnesota once they begin their practice.

At the same time, I stumbled across an article from 1968 that discussed the “New Type of Doctor” that would be needed by the year 2000. The article begins by emphasizing that it is not the physician “assigned to care for passengers and crew of an interplanetary space ship” but instead it will be a “new type of medical specialist – the family practice physician.”

The 1968 program for new doctors established the Division of Family Practice and Community Health at the University of Minnesota, one of the oldest and largest in the nation. It began as a response to the national shortage of primary care physicians during the 1960s.

Forty years later, the need still exists, as is evident from the Star Tribune article, but the emphasis is now on filling the need for specific communities with what the program creators refer to as doctors with “cultural competencies.”

To read the full article from the 1968 September/October issue of mediCALL (a former publication of the University of Minnesota Health Sciences Center) click the image below.