25th Anniversary of Allied Health
This article describes the creation and accomplishments of the School of Allied Health. This and other articles may be found in the University Archives.
Citation for this article is: Brown, E. Ramona. "25 Years Later, The Mission Stands: 'Produce New Categories of Allied Health Providers'," Alliance,Vol 1, No 1, Spring/Summer 1994.
After the creation of a nursing school at East Carolina College in 1960, the leadership of the university and the communities in and around Pitt County became keenly aware of the dearth of health care providers to serve in a region plagued by disproportionate infant mortality and early deaths from chronic illnesses such as diabetes and hearfrbtt disease.
Efforts to organize the existing health resources by the region's health care professionals soon led to the idea to develop a medical school with a principal mission to prepare primary care physicians to serve in doctor-shortage areas. While the possibility of establishing a two-year medical school program was being explored, it was also suggested after an exhaustive study of the region's health care needs that bachelor's degree programs in health-related sciences be included.
By 1967 the legislature of North Carolina had authorized East Carolina had authorized East Carolina University to move forward with plans to establish a Life Sciences and Community Health Institute. A year later this institute had become a professional school and was re-named the School of Allied Health Professions and Medical Education Center. Dr. Edwin Monroe, a private practice physician in Greenville, was recruited by university Chancellor Leo W. Jenkins to become the institute's director and to lead efforts to develop the new professional school.Monroe, the founding dean of the school, later was named the first vice chancellor of the university's Health Affairs Division that included the Schools of Allied Health Professions and Social Professions, Nursing and Medicine.
In a progress report issued in October of 1968 on the new professional school, Monroe said, "New health-related professional curricula have been organized and approved . . . and are now being evaluated by the North Carolina Board of Higher Education. Their approval by the board is virtually assured by the fact that the board approved the entire program concept, including new curricula, in its original 'Institute' format.
. . . This dean of this new school, with the advice of the practicing physicians in Eastern North Carolina, plans to organize an innovative program to produce a new category of health professionals."
According to Monroe, funding for the new school's first programs was appropriated during a 1969 session of the North Carolina General Assembly. The school's first degree offerings were a bachelor of sciences degree in medical technology and a bachelor of arts degree in social welfare.Between 1968 and 1971, the school added degree programs in medical records librarianship, physical therapy and occupational therapy.
"It was a highly interesting and challenging time for those of us who were involved.In 1968, there wasn't anything out there like what we were trying to accomplish at ECU, said Monroe of those early years." Today, as I look back I am gratified to have been a part of something that fulfilled a regions need for health care professionals and has grown to provide the state with needed health care providers."
Mission Accomplished
In 1971, Monroe recruited Dr. Ronald Thiele, a superintendent of a state institution for mentally-retarded children in Nashville, Tenn., to replace him as dean.
Upon arriving in January of 1972, Thiele found the new allied health programs spread out in sites throughout the campus. Some were located in the School of Nursing Building, Erwin Hall and Whicard Annex, and the university dining hall.
"At the time I arrived," said Thiele," over half were enrolled in social work."
In June of 1972, the allied health programs were brought together under a single roof at the new Carol G. Belk Building, which remains the current home of allied health sciences programs.At that time, the university's rehabilitation counseling and speech-language and auditory pathology programs were moved from the School of Education and added to the allied health school offerings, said Thiele.During the same summer, the environment health and community health education programs were started within the school.
"At the time we moved into Belk, we were already crowded," Thiele chuckled. "In those early years we were consumed with getting the programs started and accredited nationally. Recruitment of students was a principal goal.
"As fast as we were graduating students, the employment sector of eastern North Carolina was picking them up," he recalled.
According to Thiele, one student made up the first class of medical laboratory technologists graduated by the new school. The first class of occupational therapists included three students while five students were the first graduates of the physical therapy program.
"After those first graduates were out into the field, we then quickly began to recruit larger classes, " said Thiele.
He pointed out that many of the school's programs, such as environmental health and community health, were started with federal grants.
"In those years, there was a lot of available federal money to help us as well as other schools in the nation to develop allied health programs.Many of the new faculty came in on federal funds and were later supported by state funds," Thiele explained. "This new school recieved favorable financial support not just from federal grants but from university and state sources."
Twenty-five years ago when the School of Allied Health Sciences was established, allied health programs were springing up all over the country. The programs at ECU were a part of that trend.
Said Thiele, "When I arrived in 1972, Dr. Monroe had already laid out a very good and mangeable situation for me.You can't say enough or give enough credit to the founding dean.
"The orginal mission stated by Dr. Monroe was always our single mission," he said."Year after year, our goal was to educate and prepare allied health professionals for eastern North Carolina. And we did.
"The records we kept showed that 60 percent of the students enrolled were eastern North Carolinians. It's also interesting to note," he said, "that 60 percent of the graduates remained in the East to practice."
Today, more than 50 percent of the school's 2,500 graduates live and practice in the eastern part of the state.
"We really did populate the East with these needed health care professionals," said Thiele. "At the time we graduated our first student in medical records, there were about five registered medical record administrators in all of eastern North Carolina.
"Now, there must be close to 200," he said. "There were only a handful of physical therapists and virtually no medical laboratory technologists and occupational therapists.
"I tell you allied health professionals in these parts were scarce," said Thiele."Now, they are here. And most of them are ECU graduates."
Under Thiele's leadership, the social welfare program, later renamed the social work program in the late 1970s, became a seperate school after it began offering a master's degree in 1983-84.
"This was a major accomplishment for us as a school," Thiele said. "It was at this point that we were really beginning to see our growth when a part of us had matured to become a seperate school."
In the early 80s, allied health sciences and nursing programs nationwide were beginning to lose students to other disciplines such as business. ECU was no exception.
"We began to hurt for students," Thiele recalled. "Recruitment became a chief goal again. We weathered this slump, and by the late 80s and early 90s students began to flock back into thesehelping professions."
In 1994, applications for entry into both undergraduate and graduate programs offered by the school have driven up the demand for space and faculty, according to reports from school officials.Currently, programs such as physical therapy have more than 300 applicants each year for 36 available seats in the undergraduate program. The applicant pool in occupational therapy is also up with at least 150 applicants each year for 24 available seats.
When Thiele retired in June of 1991, he had begun to steer the programs within his school toward providing graduate education and developing a research mission that emphasized rural health practice. Prior to his retirement, the Department of Clinical Laboratory Sciences, formerly the Department of Medical Laboratory Science, had joined with the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in the ECU School of Medicine to provide offer the state's only bachelor's degree program in cytotechnology. During his tenure as dean, he was intrumental in the creation of a biostatistics and epidemiology program.
"I think the best thing I did in my 20 years as dean was to identify and support good faculty who could be leaders in their disciplines," said Thiele. "That was key to the school's success."
Retaining Our Roots While Advancing Ahead
In March of 1992, the school's third dean, Dr. Harold P. Jones, assumed his role in a school he describes as "poised to address very important problems related to health care delivery in rural communities because of its setting and statewide reputation."
Jones had been chief of the science policy and analysis branch of the Office of Policy and External Affairs at the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Rockville, Md.
In 25 years, the school has come an incredibly long way," said Jones when reflecting on the anniversary theme, "Reflections 1968-Visions 1993-94."Our school has become the state's largest allied health sciences school and the major provider of allied health professionals for our region and the state."
During Thiele's 20 years here said Jones, "he developed a wide array of programs with everything from community health promotion and prevention to clinical treatment and support programs. I think his real accomplishments included the creation of these programs and an understanding of how this breadth of programs could be joined together to move the school toward more exciting goals and missions.
"That has provided me with an opportunity to move toward bringing the programs together to work on innovative and interdisciplinary efforts to address regional health care needs," said Jones." He also left behind a high-quality faculty who are excited about moving forward."
The move forward includes replacing the bachelor's degree in physical therapy with an entry-level master's degree by fall of 1995. With this change, the program will become the largest PT program in the state, accommodating 40 students, said Dr. Bruce Albright, the department's chairman.
According to Dr. Kevin O'Brien, the school's associate dean, the Department of Occupational Therapy is investigating the possibility of providing an advanced master's degree in OT by the fall of 1996.
New public laws that allow for mainstreaming of special populations such as the hearing-impaired into public school classrooms are creating the need for more speech-language pathologists and audiologists. To accommodate the expansion of discipline, the Department of Speech-Language and Auditory Pathology is working on plans to develop a doctoral program within its graduate studies curriculum. Plans are under way to develop a program that will enroll its first students by the fall of 1996.
"The addition of the doctoral program moves us toward another dimension in teaching, research and service," said Jones."Though we have made this move toward doctoral preparation, we will be quite careful not to steer ourselves away from our primary mission of providing allied health professionals and services to this region of the state. While this is a very important part of the academic growth of the school, we have to be cautious that this doesn't come at the expense of very high level educational programs for allied health providers."
ECU was selected from among six-state supported programs which already offer master's degrees in SLAP to provide doctoral studies in the discipline.
Public concerns about environment hazards as well as management and policy making for public safety and environmental health specialist.According to a report issued by the ECU Department of Environmental Health, current enrollment figures show a 40 percent increase over the last year in the number of students pursuing bachelor's and master's degrees in the discipline.
Student interest in clinical laboratory sciences, rehabilitaion studies, community health and health information management remains consistent with projected job forecasts.
The clinical lab sciences program has increased its applicant pool by 52 percent over the last two years, while the health information management program has had an 80 percent rise in the number of applicants between 1992 and 1994.
As the student enrollment increases, university officials have appealed for a new undergraduate degree program for the Department of Rehabilitation Studies. According to O'Brien, efforts are now under way to plan the undergraduate offering.The department's master's degree program continues to grow with an average of 77 graduate students enrolled in the program over the last three years.
Program expansions in the Department of Community Health are being planned.The department is working with the ECU School of Business to develop coursework in health care finance and management. The four-course sequence will become a part of the M.B.A. program beginning in the fall of 1994.Graduate students enrolled in the master's program in public administration may also fulfill work in community health as a sequence option.
By 1995, the school also expects to enroll its first class into the physicians assistant program.
"One of the reasons we are plannning a P.A. program," said Jones," is because there is clearly a need to deliver those services especially in eastern North Carolina."
"Dr. Monroe's statement on the mission 'to produce new categories of allied health providers' is just as significant today as it was in 1968," explained Jones. "Twenty-five years ago, the statement meant that the University would produce new categories of providers who were already out there but wer scarce in our region. Now, that statement probably means producing new categories of health care providers who are different or who are an educational product quite different from those produced 25 years ago."
As the school moves into its second 25-year era, allied health education will undergo significant changes, Jones said.
It's still the same goal to provide quality health care through allied health professions, but with health care reform coming our way, there are questions about what type of allied health professionals will be needed to respond to a new health care system," Jones explained."Both medical education and nursing education are re-thinking what they do and what they will do in the future. Allied health will have to do the same so that we can see how we will fit and work in the new system. It will probably require some innovative and possibly radical approaches to education as we look around and ask question, What Does the patient need? rather than What do we do to protect our professions?"
Jones predicted that allied health programs will evaluate patient needs, determine what types of individuals need to be trained to meet those needs, and then build curricula centered around preparing needed allied health providers.
Reflecting on the history of the allied health professions, Jones said, "There has probably never been a more important time in the history of the allied health education for allied health educators -- those in the employment sector, those representing our professional society groups to sit down and determine what the needs really are and will be."
Since the emergence of allied health professions in the 1960s, Jones said most of the emphasis has been placed on providing the number of professionals needed in various allied health disciplines.
"In the future," he said,"it may be that roles and the kinds of people needed will change.That will be our challenge.I expect the next 10 years will be a period of re-definition in the allied health professions.
"I am excited about what this means for us," said Jones "because I think allied health professions are going to be more visibly important within the new health care system as people become more aware of the types and the quality of services delivered by allied health professionals often at a fraction of the cost of services provided by other health care providers."
As for ECU's unique challenges, Jones said, "In our region, we still have the significant challenge of meeting needs of underserved populations. Even though we have made a tremendous dent in this area's health workforce needs, there are still areas in our rural communities, particularly those minority communities within rural environments, where providers simply are not there."
While part of the issue could be addressed by providing more incentives for graduates to locate practices in these areas, Jones said, "We here are at the school will be looking at what we are doing to educate and train students but also what we are doing in selecting students for enrollment in our programs."
Finally, Jones said that "as the health care system is changed by health care reform initiatives, we will be challenged with re-educating those professionals who are already in the workforce.Continuing education for these professionals will become an important priority."
Said Jones of the school's vision for the next 25 years, "I expect that the school will take that next leap beyond its original mission to become recognized as a national leader in allied health education, especially in the development of educational, service and research programs that address the needs of rual communities.
"We have just the right setting."
