新闻
总裁兼首席执行官因热心支持 "家乡学者 "计划而荣获 "年度倡导者 "称号
在华盛顿特区举行的全国社区卫生中心协会政策与问题论坛的临床实践委员会会议上，莱特社区卫生和医学研究生教育中心总裁兼首席执行官琳达-托马斯-赫马克（Linda Thomas-Hemak）博士（中）荣获年度家乡学者倡导者奖、左为莱特医学研究生教育中心（The Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education）董事会成员，右为亚利桑那州斯蒂尔大学骨科医学院（A.T. Still University School of Osteopathic Medicine）大学合作副总裁加里-克劳德（Gary L. Cloud）博士、工商管理硕士。该奖项旨在表彰托马斯-赫马克博士为发掘和指导宾夕法尼亚州东北部未来的内科医生、牙医、医生助理和其他医疗保健专业人士所做的充满激情和使命感的努力。
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 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.
