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Norfolk — Norfolk State University and Eastern Virginia Medical School signed an agreement Thursday with Old Dominion University to move forward with a plan to collaborate on a joint public health school.
The school will be based on the ODU campus, centered on training public health professionals and offering advanced academic degrees. Its mission will be to improve health disparities in Hampton Roads.
The General Assembly backed the project with $5 million for ODU and NSU to explore the joint school for this fiscal year, which began July 1. Sentara Healthcare also gave $4 million to the two universities to support the accreditation process.
“The work we have to do is not about any one individual. It is about the collective,” ODU president Brian Hemphill said in a statement. “As a community, with all of us coming together, we will be able to do dynamic work on behalf of our citizens with this school of public health.”
Community leaders have lamented the lack of public health workers in Hampton Roads for years, and the pandemic has brought that need into focus.
Eastern Virginia residents have some of the country’s worst health outcomes. The region lags behind the state and nation in infant mortality, cancer, heart disease and diabetes. Most of these rankings reflect disparities with minority and low-income populations.
For instance, the infant death rate in Virginia and the United States was 5.8 out of 1,000 live births in 2017. But in Norfolk, the rate of Black baby deaths was 18.2.
Regarding prostate cancer, the national death rate was 19.5 out of 100,000 lives in 2015. But in Portsmouth, Black men died at a rate of 66.5 out of 100,000 — nearly four times that of white men.
Under the new school agreement, ODU will serve as the lead institution, providing the organizational, administrative and governance functions. Representatives from each university will serve on operations and curriculum committees.
The school will offer a master of public health degree and doctoral programs. Other degrees could be added in the future.
A search committee has been formed to hire the first dean, who will be appointed by the ODU president.
EVMS’ collaboration on the public health school won’t interfere with a plan it announced two months ago to create a center for health equity on its campus with Chesapeake Regional Medical Center and Riverside Health. The proposal conspicuously left out its primary hospital partner, Sentara. EVMS said then it had already secured the partners’ financial support.
The ODU deal follows a year of feuding between EVMS and Sentara, which touched off when a consultant, hired by third-party business think tank ReInvent Hampton Roads, made recommendations on how the medical school could be run by ODU. The proposed merger would have involved establishing a new public health school.
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The consultant also urged that EVMS’ faculty of doctors and nurses be absorbed into Sentara’s medical practices group. The report was given to Gov. Ralph Northam ahead of the General Assembly session.
In emails obtained by The Virginian-Pilot, EVMS’ then president and provost Richard Homan and board rector Theresa Emory had questioned who the consultant’s real client was. They discovered Sentara CEO Howard Kern was also a director on ReInvent’s board, a relationship they considered a conflict of interest and a fact not disclosed to them before they agreed to participate in the merger study.
EVMS’ board ultimately held a vote of no confidence in the consultant, who was predominantly paid for by Sentara.
In an abrupt leadership change, the school announced Homan’s retirement on the first day of classes earlier this month. Emory is no longer at the helm of the board.
Vincent Rhodes, a spokesman for EVMS, said the ODU public health school agreement would not hurt plans for the medical school’s health equity center in the Brock Institute because it wouldn’t be a degree-granting program.
In an Aug. 4 interview, Bruce Waldholtz, the newly tapped board rector, said the medical school would be having a retreat with Sentara, ODU and state leaders in early September. The event would include guests with knowledge in academic health centers, he said.
Elisha Sauers, 757-839-4754, elisha.sauers@pilotonline.com