By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
University of Missouri officials say they saw a need and sought to fill it.
That need: more health care workers in rural America. The solution: build a new, $14.5 million UMKC School of Medicine across from Mosaic Life Care in St. Joseph.
University of Missouri system President Mun Choi says the university wants to help address the needs of rural Missouri.
“It is not only rural health care, but also rural broadband as well as meeting the needs of rural education,” Choi tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post.
The 22,000 square-foot building is expected to open in 2025. It is designed to allow for the instruction of 80 medical students at a time with 20 projected to graduate each year. It is an extension of the UMKC Medical School program began at Mosaic three years ago, held within the Mosaic Life Care hospital complex.
Choi says the UMKC program in St. Joseph and plans for a new facility fit nicely with other moves by MU.
“This is an expansion, because we’ve not had a medical school campus in this part of the state,” Choi says. “But this is continuing what we began in Springfield with MU School of Medicine having a satellite campus in Springfield.”
The University of Missouri held an elaborate groundbreaking ceremony at the corner of Faraon Street and Riverside Road Tuesday with a huge white tent filled with dignitaries from the academic, medical, and political world. Students demonstrated some of the classes taught currently by UMKC at the Mosaic campus, across the road.
UMKC Chancellor Mauli Agrawal says this new medical building could be just the start of the school’s offerings in St. Joseph.
“Once we have this program running, we have so many degrees in the health areas that we offer out of UMKC, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t think of those in the future,” Agrawal tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. “But, one thing at a time. Let this one be successful. We’ll work out all the kinks. Then we will consider other programs as well.”
Students currently being taught at the UMKC Mosaic program are nearing graduation.
Emma Smith is a student from St. Louis who got her undergraduate degree at the University of Missouri-Columbia and has one year to go in the St. Joseph program and hopes to work in rural America.
“I actually lived outside of Columbia for three of my four years of my undergraduate degree and that’s kind of where I started to recognize some of the disparities within rural care and some of the barriers that patients can face in these areas,” Smith tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. “So, that’s why the St. Joseph program was such a good fit for me.”
Smith plans to take up residency once she completes the program at Mosaic and has yet to decide what specialty she will enter.
