Hampton Roads, like many communities across the country, faces a shortage of health care workers. The Association of American Medical Colleges projected that by 2036 the U.S. will face a shortage of as many as 86,000 physicians. Additionally, the global professional services firm Mercer estimates that the United States will be short 3.2 million health care professionals by 2026, and the Health Resources and Services Administration reports that 100 million Americans already live in areas exhibiting primary medical health professions shortages.
Now for the good news: As a result of the recent integration of Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS) into Old Dominion University and our critically important partnership with Sentara Health, Hampton Roads is uniquely situated to face this challenge.
A few years ago, discussions began in earnest about integrating EVMS into ODU. This was neither an easy undertaking nor a new idea. This time, however, our partners — including the governor, the Virginia General Assembly, Sentara Health and community leaders — aligned behind the efforts. In early June, these groups gathered to celebrate the culmination of nearly three years of hard work. On July 1, Macon & Joan Brock Virginia Health Sciences at Old Dominion University was established, thereby creating the most complex and largest academic health sciences center in the commonwealth.
A key goal of our new academic health sciences center and partnership with Sentara is creating a robust and expanded health care workforce pipeline. Expanding medical residency and fellowship programs for physician training is a cornerstone strategy for our shared work, but expansion of these critical programs is a complex challenge due to the considerable amount of required resources. Fortunately, Sentara’s strong commitment and extensive support are helping to alleviate this issue.
Over the past 20 years, Sentara has invested substantially in our graduate medical programs nearly doubling the training positions it funds. In the 2005-06 academic year, Sentara funded 125.5 full-time equivalency residency/fellowship positions (FTEs). In 2013-14, that funding increased to 156 FTEs and for 2024-25 that funding supports 240 FTEs. Moving forward, we continue to work closely with Sentara to expand the number of residency programs we provide, specifically targeting areas of acute physician shortage and community need. In the near term, physician shortages and care gaps in areas such as anesthesiology, neurology, cardiology, rheumatology, internal medicine and rural-track primary care/family medicine are expected to be addressed through the creation and expansion of residency programs.
In addition to our collaborative efforts to enhance residency training and provide the physician workforce for the region, the merger of EVMS into ODU will result in expanded and new training programs to help address other health care workforce needs as well through our Ellmer College of Health Sciences, Ellmer School of Nursing and EVMS School of Health Professions.
Sentara’s support plays a critical role in all of these endeavors and more. In addition to residency/fellowship training, its steadfast support allows us to expand and maintain required training sites for our medical, physician assistant, surgical assistant and nurse practitioner students, as well as others. It provides needed support for research activities necessary to train the future health care workforce and it enhances our ability to recruit leadership and clinical providers to the area.
Simply put, the current and future success of Macon & Joan Brock Virginia Health Sciences at Old Dominion University could not be accomplished without our one-of-a-kind partnership with Sentara Health, which includes a commitment of $350 million over the next 10 years to support our ability to address the health care workforce needs of Hampton Roads.
Finally, we would be remiss not to mention that recruiting the best and brightest to the region just became easier thanks to our generous community leaders. Joan Brock’s gift of $20 million provides scholarships for medical students planning to stay in Virginia after residencies or fellowships. Similarly, Dennis and Jan Ellmer gave $20 million to support scholarships for students pursuing health degrees and planning to stay in Hampton Roads. These gifts, coupled with support from Sentara, are essential to our long-term success.
While challenges lie ahead, we are fully committed to put all resources to help address them. Our bold and promising future is amplified if we collectively work together and align our resources to provide a larger health care workforce and to help address the health equity in our communities.
Alfred Abuhamad, M.D., is executive vice president of Macon & Joan Brock Virginia Health Sciences at Old Dominion University and dean of Eastern Virginia Medical School. Brian O. Hemphill, Ph.D., is president of Old Dominion University.
