The Wright Center for Community Health welcomed the first class of master’s degree-level physician assistant students from the Central Coast Physician Assistant program to its network of primary care practices. A.T. Still University of Health Sciences’ new initiative, in partnership with the National Association of Community Health Centers, enables students to gain knowledge and experience in the field. Members of the inaugural class, first row from left, are Kari Nhi Pham, Lisa Lac, Adjoa Ghansah and Rachel Aroneo; and standing, Bryan Boyle, MPAS, PA-C, The Wright Center; Gregory Castle, Stefan Howard, Diana Omozee, Tomislav Lojpur and Angelo Brutico, MPAS, PA-C, The Wright Center.

The Wright Center for Community Health recently welcomed eight master’s degree-level students who will be gaining knowledge and experience in its primary care practices as they complete a program to become physician assistants.

The students are part of the first class to enroll in the Central Coast Physician Assistant program, a new initiative of A.T. Still University of Health Sciences (ATSU) in partnership with the National Association of Community Health Centers and select health centers across the country.

Participants in the 24-month program attend ATSU’s Santa Maria campus in California for one year during their pre-clinical phase. Then they enter a clinical phase, which includes 35 weeks of supervised clinical practice experiences at The Wright Center or other partnered community health center.

“The Wright Centers for Community Health and Graduate Medical Education are deeply immersed in and passionately committed to developing and inspiring our current and future interprofessional health care workforce,” said Dr. Linda Thomas-Hemak, president and CEO of The Wright Centers for Community Health and Graduate Medical Education. “We are excited to embrace an expanded role in preparing physician assistants to work in community-based teaching health center settings, where they will serve and care for historically underserved populations.

“Our partnership with ATSU’s College for Healthy Communities will force-multiply the delivery of our shared mission to improve the health and welfare of America,” she added. “Future graduates of the program will be essential for the continued workforce renewal of safety-net community providers such as The Wright Center for Community Health, which depend on dedicated teams of caring, patient- and community-centered healers.” 

Physician assistants Bryan Boyle and Angelo Brutico, each of whom is a Marywood University alumnus and Wright Center employee, will provide on-site program supervision and leadership as ATSU’s regional directors of physician assistant education.

The Central Coast Physician Assistant program prepares its graduates to be “highly competent professionals in the science of medicine” who are “steeped in the osteopathic tradition of body, mind, and spirit care for the whole person.”

The Wright Center and ATSU have a long track record of successfully collaborating to conceptualize and launch programs that develop compassionate, skilled physicians and other health care professionals to help address workforce shortages in the nation’s rural and other underserved communities.

Representatives from the A.T. Still University School of Osteopathic Medicine in Arizona (ATSU-SOMA), based in Mesa, were involved in the planning stages of The Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education’s National Family Medicine Residency – a first-of-its-kind program that places resident physicians in one of four partner training sites in the U.S.

In 2020, as part of a separate program, The Wright Center for Community Health became a rotational host site for aspiring doctors enrolled at ATSU-SOMA – which prides itself on being “the medical school of the future.” The school’s unique medical education model allows students to spend their first year on campus in Mesa, Arizona, followed by three years at a community health center, where an emphasis is placed on fostering community-minded physicians who will be advocates for equitable health care access. About 30 ATSU-SOMA medical school students are currently based at The Wright Center’s primary care practices in Northeast Pennsylvania.

These programs, in combination with The Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education’s existing residency and fellowship programs, have positioned The Wright Center nonprofit enterprise to be a true regional provider of interprofessional health care education.

The inaugural cohort of physician assistant students is scheduled to complete its clinical rotation at The Wright Center in June 2023.

To learn more about opportunities in the Central Coast Physician Assistant program, visit ATSU’s website at atsu.edu. Or contact Carla Blakeslee, The Wright Center’s coordinator of clerkships, by calling 570-591-5116 or sending an email to blakesleec@thewrightcenter.org.

A 2015 white paper published by a physician staffing firm called it a “silent shortage.” In a country gripped by the grim phenomenon dubbed “deaths of despair,” “it” is a severe and under-appreciated shortage of the very people with the skills and knowledge necessary to reverse the trend. Our region, like the rest of the nation, needs psychiatrists.
How bad is the problem? The late Richard Cooper, M.D. of the University of Pennsylvania, a noted national authority on physician supply, distribution and utilization, finds that a population of 100,000 should have 14.7 psychiatrists, or one for every 6,800 people. The counties of northeastern Pennsylvania average about 8.5, according to Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care. Moreover, the few psychiatrists we have must cope with three of the “Top 10” diseases most associated with lost quality of life. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “unipolar depressive disorders” are the No. 1 cause of medical disability in the United States. Dementias, including Alzheimer’s, and alcohol and ecstasy disorders come in at No. 3 and No. 4. The escalating opioid crisis is, no doubt, claiming its place as it climbs the rank order.
Despite the suffering and lost years of life caused by (often undiagnosed) behavioral and mental health diseases, we still cling to outdated ideas about psychiatry like, “If people just had more willpower and determination, they’d “snap out of” their depression,” and, “Addiction is a sign of moral weakness, so patients have only themselves to blame.” The healthcare system is fragmented; it is not built on resiliency, but on brokenness. The persistence of these discredited notions about mental health has led to what should be a national wake-up call – for the first time in decades, mortality rates for a certain U.S. demographic (whites aged 45 to 54 – an important demographic in NEPA) rose by half a percent a year since 1998. The cause of these deaths is overwhelmingly attributed to suicide and addiction. No other rich country has experienced anything like these “deaths of despair.” As Angus Deaton, an economist, Nobel Laureate and co-author of the paper which first identified the trend, told the Washington Post, “That means half a million people are dead who should not be dead. That’s about 40 times the Ebola stats. You’re getting up there with HIV-AIDS.”
Although Dr. Deaton’s ground-breaking report was published in 2015, a Community Health Needs Assessment conducted by the Institute for Public Policy and Economic Development in 2012 identified mental and behavioral health challenges, including higher-than-national-average suicide rates, in our region. That’s when Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine convened an advisory group for the school’s Behavioral Health Initiative (BHI). The advisory committee was charged with identifying gaps in access to mental health services in several counties of northeastern Pennsylvania. Market intelligence firm, Open Minds, working on behalf of BHI, concluded that a seven-county region of NEPA would need to increase its number of psychiatrists by 40 percent simply to meet current need. With that data, at the time of its formal launch in 2015, BHI generated a key recommendation: the School of Medicine and The Wright Center should co-create a psychiatry residency program to train new doctors in this desperately needed specialty. All parties humbly recognized a new psychiatry residency could serve as an educational fulcrum for much larger inter-professional workforce development initiatives by leveraging this powerful, inclusive partnership.
This July, just two years after BHI’s 2015 launch (light speed in academia), we are proud to announce that The Wright Center will welcome four residents to its brand-new, ACGME (Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education) accredited psychiatry residency program. The fact that one of these new psychiatry residents is also a 2017 graduate of Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine makes this accomplishment all the more meaningful. Psychiatry training takes four years, so once all four classes are filled, we will train 16 residents here in Scranton and Wilkes Barre, and graduate four newly-minted psychiatrists per year.
The School of Medicine and The Wright Center have long been partners committed to addressing the specific health needs of our community, with a formal commitment solidified through the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding in 2015. That’s why we and our BHI partners worked so swiftly and purposefully to establish the psychiatry residency program despite the significant challenges of funding and accreditation. Wide-scale community collaboration, including Scranton Counseling Center’s generosity with the time and the expertise of Sanjay Chandragiri, MD, our pioneering program director, has generated the opportunity for four new doctors to learn how to treat and heal patients struggling with behavioral health issues. In this way, our community is taking an important step toward reducing “deaths of despair” in our region, replacing years lost to disability with years of enhanced health and wellbeing.

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Linda Thomas-Hemak, MD is President/CEO of The Wright Center Medical Group and The Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education, the largest HRSA-funded Teaching Health Center (THC) consortium in the United States
Terri Lacey, RN is executive director of Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine’s Behavioral Health Initiative, a collaborative, community-based initiative to address systemic gaps in mental health and substance abuse services available in northeastern and north central Pennsylvania.

1991 was a big year –the internet was first opened for commercial use, Seinfeld made its network debut, minimum wage peaked at $4.25 and we were graced with the presence of hits from Paula Abdu, Color Me Badd and Nirvana, now a days it is necessary and important to have insurance outsourcing and bookkeeping (outsource your backend office) when navigating online. Since our late 20th century glory days, the price of gas has tripled and the cost of a home, quadrupled, but there is one number that we are happy to see rise.

The size of our graduating class has increased 743%

In 1991, what we now know as The Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education was the Scranton-Temple Residency Program (STRP). Founded in 1977, STRP was the brainchild of Robert E. Wright, MD, FACP. Twenty-five years ago – in 1991 – our staff had the chance to sit down with Dr. Wright and learn more about his inspiration for what has grown into The Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education.
Though much has changed across the nation since 1991, the ideology and methodology of our residency program have remained true to its humble beginnings. To learn more about Dr. Wright’s motivations for the program, click on the news clipping below:
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