Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University

The Brody School of Medicine is the Medical School at East Carolina University, North Carolina, United States. According to the 2007 U.S. News and World Report the Brody School of Medicine is ranked sixth in the nation in primary care, ninth in rural medicine and eighth in family medicine. One hundred percent of the 290 current students (to be expanded to 325) are North Carolina citizens.

In the early 1960s, a group of leaders from eastern North Carolina proposed that a medical school be established at what was then East Carolina College. They were concerned about the deficit of modern medical care available in the region, and about who would replace the generation of physicians then in practice. Over the next decade these and other men and women, under the determined leadership of the late Dr. Leo W. Jenkins, chancellor of the college, made the case for their idea to anyone who would listen.

History
In time, East Carolina University was authorized to establish a health affairs division as a foundation for a medical program, and then a one-year medical school whose participants completed their medical education at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Finally in 1974, the General Assembly of North Carolina appropriated the funds to establish a four-year medical school at East Carolina University.

The legislature set forth a three-fold mission for the ECU School of Medicine: to increase the supply of primary care physicians to serve the state, to improve health status of citizens in eastern North Carolina, and to enhance the access of minority and disadvantaged students to a medical education.

Since 1977, when the first class of 28 students enrolled in the four-year School of Medicine, the institution has grown dramatically in its teaching, research and patient care roles. Today, in its partnership with University Health Systems of Eastern Carolina and regional physicians, the school is the educational centerpiece of one of North Carolina's largest and most productive academic medical centers. In 1999, it was renamed the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University, in recognition of the continuous support of the Brody family.

East Carolina University is a pioneer in minimally invasive robotic surgery. On May 3, 2000 at East Carolina's Brody School of Medicine, Dr. Randolph Chitwood performed the first robotic heart value surgery in North America. Using this technology, surgeons at the school have performed more operations on the heart's mitral valve than any other center in the world by far

East Carolina University researchers have received a $491,000 grant from Johnson & Johnson to look for new treatments for diabetes that potentially could help patients overcome the disease. The grant will fund a two-year clinical study of adults with type 2 diabetes to evaluate insulin sensitivity and glucose metabolism before and after gastric-bypass surgery. Gastric-bypass, or bariatric, surgery is an operation that reduces the size of the stomach and reroutes the small intestine with the primary goal of helping morbidly obese people -- typically those more than 100 pounds over their ideal body weight -- lose weight and improve their health.

Future
Officials broke ground, on March 31, 2006 for the new $60 million cardiac research and treatment center at East Carolina University. The institute, to be called the East Carolina Heart Institute (ECHI), is designed to be a world-class cardiovascular center offering state-of-the-art medical technology, education and research. In addition to ECU's research and treatment facility which will be across from the Brody School of Medicine Outpatient Center, Pitt County Memorial Hospital is building a $150 million, 120-bed cardiovascular center on the east side of the hospital directly behind the ECHI. Both facilities should open in 2008.