City of Logan receives $1.2 million from Congress for Marshall surgical residencies

City of Logan received $1.2 million in Congressional District Spending with support from U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito to support the White Coat Rural Surgery Residency Program in partnership with Marshall Health.

Robert Fields | WVOW News

CITY OF LOGAN The City of Logan announced that it has received over a million dollars to support a first-in-the-nation medical education program.

City officials on Thursday revealed that Logan was approved for a $1.2 million congressional spending allocation for the White Coat Rural Surgery Residency Program. The initiative is in partnership with Marshall University’s Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine and seeks to train medical students in general surgery practices specialized to rural settings.

The most noticeable steps in establishing the program have mostly taken place in the past two years, but according to the Vice Dean of Education at Marshall’s School of Medicine, Dr. Paula Wehner, the progress towards establishing the program started over a decade ago with Logan Regional Medical Center’s Dr. Jodi Cisco-Goff, who has been surgery faculty since she started her career at Logan Regional.

“Some federal funding was announced to initiate rural residency training programs, and because Doctor Goff was an outstanding surgeon established at Logan, we decided to base our residency program here in Logan with her as a primary faculty and with our faculty in Huntington,” said Dr. Wehner.

“From that developed, very simply, the need for housing. You cannot commute from Huntington to Logan. The residents need two separate residences, and the City of Logan has been an amazing collaborator to solve this problem, so from a very simple need, developed what happened this evening with the $1.2 million announcement, that we helped craft between Marshall graduate medical education and the City of Logan. It was very much a joint effort, and it was successful,” she said.

She said the program is interviewing for its fourth year of surgery residents. It’s a five-year program and they take three per year, meaning when the program is full, the program will be supporting fifteen surgical residents

The city plans to house the residents in the former Logan Banner building, but the program already has one student housed at a separate unit in the Becker Building on Stratton Street, which formerly housed the city’s bookshop.

General practitioners are a dwindling population in the local medical field, as a greater number of healthcare professionals move to singularly specified fields like osteopathic medicine, cardiology, dermatology or podiatry. Logan Regional CEO Justin Turner commended the work done by both the City of Logan and Marshall Health, saying their partnership has taken that challenge for the Logan area and turned it into a massive opportunity.

“By providing this high-quality housing, we are removing a significant burden off the shoulders of our providers, and it allows us to say to the best and brightest specialists in the country, ‘come to Logan. We have a place just for you, and we have a community that supports you,’” he said. “This isn’t just a short-term fix; this is a generational investment that ensures our families won’t have to leave the region to find specialty care that they need.”

The city established the program through a years-long collaboration with the USDA, Accelerate West Virginia’s Community Development Hub, Marshall University’s Brownfields Assistance Center as well as its School of Medicine, Opportunity Appalachia, Edward Tucker Architects, Logan Regional Medical Center and U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito.

PHOTO | Robert Fields - WVOW News