By Bradley Harris
As we recognize National Public Health Week, we are reminded that public health is not something we think about once a year. It is the foundation of our daily lives that shapes everything from access to care to the strength and stability of our communities. This moment calls for reflection, but it also demands a clear understanding of what lies ahead.
Across the country, the physician workforce is aging at a rapid pace. The Association of American Medical Colleges projects that by 2034 the United States could face a shortage of up to 124,000 physicians. Nearly forty percent of today’s practicing physicians are age 55 or older and will reach retirement within the next decade. Rural states like ours will feel this impact most deeply.
This is not simply a statistic. It is a responsibility.
At the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine (WVSOM), we do not wait for the future to arrive. We prepare for it. As the only school of osteopathic medicine in our state, WVSOM holds a singular place in West Virginia’s health care landscape. We educate physicians who understand rural communities because they come from them. We train providers who return home to serve the counties that need them most. We cultivate leaders who choose West Virginia.
That work is amplified through the WVSOM Foundation.
As one of the largest medical school foundations of its kind in the United States, our reach and impact extend far beyond campus. We invest in scholarships that open doors. We support programs and initiatives that place students directly into communities where they can learn, serve and respond to real needs. We help build the infrastructure that allows future physicians to train with purpose and graduate with a clear path to impact. Every dollar invested through the foundation is a direct investment in the health of West Virginia.
WVSOM graduates consistently rank among the highest in the nation for entering primary care and serving rural communities, reinforcing the critical role this institution plays in addressing our state’s most pressing health care needs.
For our students, that investment is transformational.
The cost of medical education continues to rise across the country. Scholarship support reduces financial burden and increases the likelihood that students pursue careers in underserved communities. Emergency funding ensures that an unexpected hardship does not end a promising medical career before it begins. Endowed scholarships create lasting opportunity, carrying a family name, a community name or the name of a physician forward into the lives of students who may have otherwise never had access.
When an alumnus establishes a scholarship for students from their hometown, they create more than opportunity. They create a pipeline. When a donor establishes an endowed fund, they create permanence. That support will continue long after we are gone.
That is legacy, but legacy alone is not enough. We must also be intentional about what comes next.
As we reflect during National Public Health Week, we must bring this conversation into our communities. Public health is not abstract. It is access to quality care, reliable infrastructure and the specialty services communities depend on.
Now is the time to build the bench.
Now is the time for communities across West Virginia to ask a harder question. When we look at the physicians and public health leaders serving us today, who is next? Who is sitting in our high school classrooms right now with the potential to become the next family physician, the next rural health leader, the next specialist who will return home and serve?
I challenge every community in West Virginia to look around and ask, “When our most trusted providers step away, who will take their place?”
This is the long game.
In the Greenbrier Valley, we have something truly special. We have an institution that competes nationally while remaining rooted in service to the Mountain State. We have graduates who practice across this state and across the country with distinction and compassion. We have students who arrive with ambition and leave with purpose.
As president of the WVSOM Foundation, I am committed to building legacies with our graduates, our community partners and our network of supporters across the state and country. The strength of this institution is not only in its curriculum or its faculty. It is in the people who believe in the mission of the school and foundation and choose to invest in its future.
During this National Public Health Week, I invite you to do two things. Be grateful for the public health systems and professionals who serve you every day and then ask yourself how you will be part of what comes next.
Consider the high school or college student from the Southern Coalfields of West Virginia who dreams of becoming a physician but allows the weight of financial uncertainty to hold them back. Now consider the impact of a scholarship that makes that dream possible. Consider the legacy you can create through an investment that strengthens health care in West Virginia for generations.
Legacy is not about recognition. It is about continuity. It is about ensuring that when one generation steps away, another is ready to step forward.
Together, we can shape the future of public health and ensure that the next generation of West Virginians inherits a stronger, healthier state than the one we know today.
Bradley Harris is president of the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine Foundation and a strategic advisor based in Charleston, West Virginia.
