VCOM 2019 Annual Report

The United Company Foundation Launches $1Million Challenge to VCOM V COM received a $1 million challenge grant in December from The United Company Foundation to create a permanent and endowed scholarship that will provide financial assistance to medical students recruited from, or have an interest in serving in medically underserved communities in southwest Virginia. Future recipients of “Access to high-quality healthcare is important,” said Dixie Tooke-Rawlins, VCOM President and Provost. “I am most grateful to the trustees of The United

Company Foundation for their foresight of and understanding about the importance of encouraging students to return to practice medicine in medically and underserved areas of southwest Virginia. This challenge grant will greatly enrich VCOM’s scholarship program and enable many of our students to fulfill the College’s mission of improving the delivery of healthcare in medically underserved areas,” Tooke-Rawlins added. For more information about how you may participate in The United Company Foundation Challenge Grant, please contact Thimothy Corvin, Vice President for College Development and Alumni Relations, at 540-231-7189 or tcorvin@vcom.vt.edu .

The United Company Foundation Scholarship will be required to practice in specific counties or cities for at least three years after their

residency, with the hope they remain and practice in the region after their service obligation.

In accepting and making plans to meet the challenge, VCOM is working closely with other donors interested in improving healthcare for those families in the region. The United Company Foundation’s commitment will help address what the foundation has identified as two enormous problems: a lack of access to healthcare in medically-underserved counties in the region and the tremendous debt most medical students incur in their journey to become doctors. In making the challenge grant to VCOM, Lois Clarke, President of The United Company Foundation, said, “The foundation was motivated by what we see as an enormous need for primary care physicians and inspired by VCOM’s mission to, and success in, solving the physician shortage in the Appalachian region, especially in rural and medically- underserved communities.”

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