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President and CEO honored as “Advocate of the Year” for ardent support of Hometown Scholars
Dr. Linda Thomas-Hemak, president and CEO of The Wright Centers for Community Health and Graduate Medical Education, center, received the Hometown Scholar Advocate of the Year award during a clinical practice committee meeting at the National Association of Community Health Centers Policy & Issues Forum in Washington, D.C. Participating in the program are Douglas Spegman, M.D., left, board member, The Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education; and Gary L. Cloud, Ph.D., MBA, right, vice president of university partnerships at A.T. Still University School of Osteopathic Medicine in Arizona. The award recognizes Dr. Thomas-Hemak for her passionate, mission-driven efforts to identify and mentor future physicians, dentists, physician assistants, and other health care professionals from Northeast Pennsylvania.
Dr. Linda Thomas-Hemak, president and CEO of The Wright Centers for Community Health and Graduate Medical Education, recently received the Hometown Scholars Advocate of the Year award in recognition of her passionate, mission-driven efforts to identify and mentor future physicians, dentists, physician assistants, and other health care professionals who are from Northeast Pennsylvania.
Dr. Thomas received the award on Sunday, Feb. 11, during a clinical practice committee meeting at the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC) Policy & Issues Forum in Washington, D.C.
The Hometown Scholars program is a collaborative effort between NACHC and A.T. Still University. The program was established to identify and recruit individuals from areas served by community health centers to pursue professional degrees and become community-minded healers, including physicians, dentists, and physician assistants, who are inclined to return to work in those or similar medically underserved communities in the United States.
“The National Association of Community Health Centers and A.T. Still University have a strategy to dare children to dream, mentor them along their pathway into the health professions, and endorse those with the heart to return and work in underserved communities,” said Gary L. Cloud, Ph.D., MBA, vice president of university partnerships at A.T. Still University School of Osteopathic Medicine in Arizona. “Dr. Thomas-Hemak and The Wright Center have been exemplary supporters of that strategy encouraging community members, patients, and employees to participate and serve as role models for aspiring healers.”
At participating community health centers, leaders are encouraged to intentionally identify and nominate qualified and motivated premedical, predental, and pre-health professional candidates from their communities for Hometown Scholars program consideration, providing each with a letter of support. This endorsement, in turn, may give the candidate advanced applicant consideration when applying to medical school or dental school at A.T. Still University’s programs in Arizona or its physician assistant program in California.
“It’s been a privilege for me, on behalf of The Wright Center for Community Health, to nominate individuals from Northeast Pennsylvania to be our health center’s endorsed Hometown Scholars,” said Thomas-Hemak. “Because of the Hometown Scholars program, we’ve been able to identify and mentor aspiring physicians, dentists, and physician assistants from the communities we serve and help them pursue their professional goals. Such pipeline programs promote career access equity, and they restore our community’s public health-minded health care workforce.
“I’m particularly pleased that many of The Wright Center-endorsed scholars are women for whom this program has provided real opportunities,” she added.
For The Wright Center, its years-long participation in the Hometown Scholars program represents another way it works to sustain and grow a pipeline for primary care workforce development in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre region, supporting career growth for people who have knowledge about and interest in serving low-income and other traditionally underserved populations.
To learn more and nominate someone to be a Wright Center-endorsed Hometown Scholar, please call its Office of Clerkships at 570-591-5116 or visit TheWrightCenter.org/hometown-scholars.
