Why UNC-Wilmington wants to launch a medical school
The medical school would offer a traditional four-year medical degree and a three-year accelerated track. It wouldn’t be a teaching hospital structure, a deviation from other medical schools in the state, but it would build upon the university’s existing portfolio of health care education.
by Kate Denning, Carolina Public Press
April 30, 2026
State Rep. John Bell, R-Wayne, drives 85 minutes to see his primary care physician in Scotts Hill, a small community on the Pender and New Hanover County border, so it’s not a question in his mind whether his alma mater of UNC-Wilmington should move forward with its dream of starting a medical school.
Chancellor Aswani Volety made his pitch to the University of North Carolina System Board of Governors this April, and while an official vote wasn’t on the agenda, the board seemed more than satisfied. Sonja Nichols posed just one question: “Why would anyone say no to this?”
The medical school would offer a traditional four-year medical degree and a three-year accelerated track. It wouldn’t be a teaching hospital structure, a deviation from other medical schools in the state, but it would build upon the university’s existing portfolio of health care education. UNCW produces hundreds of nurses every year and is currently developing a Master of Physician Assistant Studies program to meet rising demand.
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By not being a teaching hospital UNCW would allow medical students to complete their residencies, which can take between three and seven years, at hospitals, clinics or rural health centers outside of the university but still in the region, Volety told Carolina Public Press. This is what Volety calls distributed clinical placements.
The advantage of having a teaching hospital is that the school solves the issue of clinical placements and residencies, Volety said, but it also adds a lot of cost and complexity that he doesn’t feel UNCW needs given its existing positive relationship with Novant Health New Hanover Regional Medical Center.
How UNCW can increase health care accessibility
Volety’s plan is a direct response to health care accessibility issues in the state’s southeast region and the greater Wilmington area. Simply put, the state is growing at a rate that its health care infrastructure is not keeping up with.
Despite Brunswick County being the fastest-growing area of the state, it boasts just one hospital. In addition to serving Wilmington’s population of more than 120,000, Novant Health NHRMCr provides support for those in surrounding counties as well that don’t have a major regional hospital, Volety said. Census data says the greater Wilmington metro area has a population of more than 450,000.
And the entire state faces a shortage of nurses and doctors, particularly in rural areas — which are plentiful in the southeast — like Columbus and Duplin County.
“When you look at Southeast North Carolina, it is growing at 2-3% per year compared to 1% on average for the rest of the state,” Volety told the board.
“These shortages result in delays in health care, if you can even get an appointment, lengthy hours in emergency rooms, very, very long delays in terms of getting speciality care, perhaps going to far off places.”
Unsurprisingly, the physician shortage can be traced back, at least in part, to the number of medical students in the state. North Carolina ranks 40th out of 50 in terms of medical students per capita despite being home to a handful of the leading medical schools in the country.
Where students start their medical career matters significantly to where they practice long term — 68% stay in the same region they attended medical school or completed their residency. The closest medical school to the Wilmington area, East Carolina University’s Brody School of Medicine, is more than two hours away. ECU’s health care system largely serves Eastern North Carolina counties like Beaufort, Bertie and Pitt.
By taking the distributed clinical placements approach, Volety hopes to give medical students at UNCW a reason to continue practicing in the region beyond their schooling and residency.
“The bottom line is, if I’m asking somebody to remain in an area, people want to have a reason to stay in that area,” he said.
“In other words, do you have community connections? Do you have deep roots in that community? So by actually having these individuals who work in these places and develop relationships and forming roots, you’re more likely to keep the individuals there, and studies have shown it. It’s not a surprise.”
Since Wilmington’s NHRMC was sold to Winston-Salem-based Novant Health in 2021, it has faced consistent low ratings and heightened safety concerns, though the hospital network has said it is working toward improvements.
Retired physician and founder of the Five Star Project Jon Martell said he believes the issues at NHRMC have contributed to health care inequality in the area, given that wealthier people are likely to travel to the Triangle for serious medical care but others will have no choice but to utilize what the southeast has to offer, even if it’s less than ideal. He supports the idea of UNCW’s medical school and could see it improving health care access and quality in the region.
A rising tide lifts all boats
An opportunity exists for a UNCW medical school to be at the forefront of advancements in medicine and medical education as it develops something entirely new, rather than scrambling to make tweaks in an attempt to catch up.
While UNCW would be taking notes from the medical schools that came before, Volety said the potential medical school is the perfect chance to build a brand new curriculum, one that includes all of the aspects of ever-evolving modern medicine — yes, that means artificial intelligence.
“AI is already being used in medicine, so whether we like it or not, the people we are training have to learn these things,” he said.
“So it’s easier to build a curriculum from the ground up than to go and modify it on a large scale. And we are looking at all the new medical schools that have started in the past two, three, four years, as well as some institutions that have some great models, like the accelerated medical school model. So this way, we can look at the best practices throughout the nation and incorporate our curriculum and emulate those best practices, as opposed to reinventing the wheel.”
The Board of Governors will revisit UNCW’s proposal as soon as May 20, and Volety is hopeful for the outcome. If given the green light, a national search for the founding dean would begin. UNCW would be looking for someone who has been in a similar role before and will be able to guide the school through the accreditation process and can help build and support the faculty.
If all goes well, UNCW would have first-year medical students on campus by 2029.
There doesn’t seem to be any competitive feelings from other medical schools in the UNC System. UNC School of Medicine in Chapel Hill typically admits just 3-5% of its more than MD program 7,000 applicants and ECU Brody School of Medicine is around 4-8%. It’s a growing pie, Volety said, and there’s more than enough students to go around.
It won’t hurt that the medical school will likely elevate the total profile of UNCW either, Volety said. Not only will it attract students interested in medical school, but it will draw in those looking for related programs like biology, chemistry, nursing or public health.
The economic impact could also be notable. A medical resident generates $450,000 in economic impact annually when they stay local, and a physician generates around $3 million per year per doctor, Volety said. That’s certainly not chump change.
“Multiply that number by 80, 90, 100, 120, and you’re retaining hopefully, let’s say 70, 80, 90 individuals per year over time,” he said.
“Fast forward to 20 years, cumulatively, the economic impact is probably $1.5 billion per year in this area. That’s a lot of economic activity. Even when you think about the number of students we have over the next five to seven years and the payroll and the direct impact of these individuals. … There is a multiplier effect, so it is a boom to this area.”
This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
