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Thursday, October 22, 2009
Medical school for Camden will benefit the region
Gov. Corzine walking gingerly without crutches as he leaves Cooper University Hospital in 2007. Corzine had surgery at Cooper on his left leg, which was broken in a motor-vehicle accident. (Elizabeth Robertson / Inquirer Staff Photographer)

Congratulations to Cooper University Hospital and Rowan University. They’re holding a celebration today in Camden to mark their partnership to create a medical school.

Gov. Brendan Byrne promised South Jersey a four-year medical school 30 years ago. But it took that long to get the right mixture of fate, politics, and economics needed to finally make it happen.
 
There was that fateful day in April 2007 when Gov. Corzine was critically injured in a car wreck on the Garden State Parkway. He gained great appreciation and respect for the doctors and staff of Cooper Hospital, where he spent 18 days being treated and recovering from multiple broken bones.
 
The politics includes the increasing clout of South Jersey’s Democratic Party since Byrne’s day, including the rise of untitled party chief George Norcross, who just happens to be on Cooper’s board. South Jersey’s clout is even more meaningful with Corzine running hard for reelection.
 
Then there’s the economics. The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey has run a program for third- and fourth-year medical students in Camden since 1981. But while UMDNJ agreed that South Jersey needed a full medical school, it said it couldn’t afford the bonded indebtedness it would take to build one.
 
Enter Rowan, which is in better fiscal shape to float a $100 million bond issue and has other plans to expand its presence in Camden. The Glassboro-based school has been acquiring buildings to educate 1,500 undergraduates in Camden. Meanwhile, funds that had gone to UMDNJ to train medical students will now go to the new Rowan-Cooper medical school.
 
This is wonderful news for one of New Jersey’s poorest towns, which will benefit from the taxable businesses and services expected to sprout near the medical school. Expansions by Rutgers University-Camden and Camden County College are also changing the economic dynamic of the city.
 
So here’s to Rowan, which is joining the 130 universities with medical schools. Here’s to Cooper Hospital, which recently opened a $220 million patient pavilion. And here’s to South Jersey’s residents, who won’t have to travel as far to get the particular care provided by a teaching hospital.
Posted by Inquirer Editorial Board @ 1:00 AM  Permalink | 1 comment
Comments   
Posted 08:49 AM, 10/27/2009
rotifer
I've not seen anyone defend the need for the new Medical School. Not covered in your article: within 25 miles of Cooper we have Temple, Jefferson, U Penn, Osteopathic, Drexel and Stratford medical schools. Is another medical school really needed in this region or is this just an ego trip? How much of the cost will be taxpayer money?
1 comments
About The Inquirer Editorial Board
Harold Jackson, a winner of the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing, grew up in Birmingham, Ala., during the civil rights movement. He graduated from Baker University in Baldwin, Kan., in 1975, with a degree in journalism/political science. He has also worked at the Birmingham Post-Herald, United Press International, the Birmingham News, and the Baltimore Sun. He was at The Inquirer in the mid-1980s, returned in 1999, and became editorial page editor in 2007.

Paul Davies is the deputy editor of the Editorial Page. His newspaper career has spanned more than 20 years and includes stints at The Wall Street Journal and the Philadelphia Daily News. He graduated from the University of Delaware and received a masters in journalism from Columbia University, where he was also a Knight-Bagehot Fellow. He was born in Philadelphia and still lives in the city.

Tony Auth began drawing while bedridden for a year and a half at the age of five. He graduated from UCLA in 1965 and worked for six years as a medical illustrator while doing three cartoons a week for various college newspapers. Tony has been happily ensconced as The Inquirer’s editorial cartoonist since 1971. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1976, and has won numerous other awards, including five Overseas Press Club Awards, the Sigma Delta Chi award for distinguished service in Journalism, and the Herblock and Thomas Nast Prizes. Tony is married to Eliza Drake Auth, a painter of realistic landscapes and portraits.

Trudy Rubin is the foreign affairs columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a member of The Inquirer’s editorial board. Her column appears twice weekly in The Inquirer and runs regularly in many other newspapers around the United States. She is the author of Willful Blindness: The Bush Administration and Iraq.

Kevin Ferris is an assistant editor on the Editorial Board who oversees the Sunday Currents section and writes a weekly column on a wide range of issues. In his 15 years on the board, he’s handled letters to the editor and the Community Voices pages and has been Commentary Page editor. He started with The Inquirer in 1986, and his assignments have ranged from the copy and news desks to the Chester County bureau and the national/foreign desk.

As an editorial writer for The Inquirer for the past two decades, Russell Cooke has written on a wide range of topics covering government, legal, civic and social issues. Before joining the Editorial Board, he was a reporter in the Inquirer’s City Hall bureau.

Editorial writer Dave Boyer joined The Inquirer in 2002. He writes about politics, government, the economy, sports and many other subjects, but draws the line at writing about "Jon & Kate Plus Eight." He has won journalism awards and insists bribery was not involved. A native of Allentown, Boyer graduated from Penn State. He and his wife reside in Center City, where they enjoy strolling and paying the wage tax.

Melanie Burney joined the editorial board in January 2008 after covering education at the Inquirer for eight years. She previously worked at the Associated Press in Philadelphia and southern New Jersey. She is a graduate of Glassboro State College, now Rowan University, and a member of the National Association of Black Journalists.

Josh Gohlke has been The Inquirer’s op-ed editor since last year, editing the daily commentary page and writing occasional editorials. He came to the Inquirer after eight years at The Record of Bergen County, N.J., first as a reporter covering local and state politics and government and ultimately as the deputy editorial page editor. He also worked as a reporter for several smaller papers in New Jersey and California. Josh was born and raised in Los Angeles and graduated from Stanford University. He lives in Philadelphia.

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