Sentara pledges $130 million to EVMS

Sentara Healthcare will triple its financial support for Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS) with a commitment of $130 million over the next five years. For the period 2018 through 2023, annual funding given by Sentara to EVMS will increase from a previous amount of $9 million per year to $26 million per year.

“After 46 years working together, the relationship between Sentara and EVMS has never been stronger,” said Sentara Board of Directors Chair, Henry U. ‘Sandy’ Harris. “Together, we are demonstrating the missions of both institutions and keeping the focus on patient care and innovation during this time of change in the health care landscape.”

“Sentara’s increased support will be transformational for our community,” said David Arias, Rector of the EVMS Board of Visitors. “It will boost the educational and research capacities of both organizations — advancing our reputations regionally and nationally while enhancing the quality of care and making a real impact on the lives of Hampton Roads residents.” 

The additional funds from Sentara will allow EVMS to establish new academic programs, bolster existing ones and continue to advance its status as a nationally recognized medical school while supporting the development of the two organizations’ shared medical campus in Norfolk as a quaternary mid-Atlantic regional medical center.

“Sentara and EVMS have worked together as partners serving eastern Virginia for over 45 years. These two great community institutions work hard to anticipate the evolving needs of the many communities we serve,” says Howard P. Kern, President and CEO of Sentara Healthcare. “We appreciate the exceptional physician and advanced practitioner graduates EVMS trains for our community, and we are proud to help them advance academic and research programs to help us both fulfill our community missions. It is Sentara’s hope that this increased funding will enable EVMS to move forward with its strategic plan to ensure their strength and stability long into the future.”

EVMS has been a community-based medical school since its inception in 1972. Under a long-standing partnership, Sentara hospitals provide clinical teaching environments for EVMS students and residents, especially at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, where EVMS physicians oversee the region’s only Level I trauma center and provide tertiary and quaternary-level services found in university-based regional academic medical centers.

“On behalf of the EVMS faculty, staff and students, I want to express our grateful appreciation to the Sentara Healthcare Board and management for their extraordinary support of our missions to educate and train the next generation of the healthcare workforce, advance medicine through new discovery, and provide care to those in greatest need,” said Richard V. Homan, MD, President and Provost, Eastern Virginia Medical School and Dean of the School of Medicine.

“I am confident that, through this increased funding, we have established a seminal and historic relationship between EVMS and Sentara which will support our faculty and provide many new and mutually beneficial programs to improve the health of the communities we serve.”

Funding from Sentara will support collaborative plans to establish the following EVMS initiatives:

— A Masters’ Degree program in Healthcare Analytics and Delivery Science supported by two full-time PhD faculty members to conduct research and performance improvement initiatives in healthcare disparities and population health management.

— The new collaborative Research Fund also will support translational research partnerships in biosciences and biotechnology research and development across multiple academic centers in Virginia and advance clinical best practice and outcomes research within the communities that we serve.

— $10.5M in endowments over three years through the EVMS Foundation to support endowed academic and clinical department chairs to support research and development of quaternary programs.

The Sentara mission to improve health every day ranges from providing Level I trauma services in partnership with EVMS to enhancing population health and disease management with innovative best practices through its clinical teams and Optima Health Plan. EVMS prides itself on its stated goal to be the most community-focused school of medicine and health professions in the nation while supporting world-renowned research in fertility, diabetes, and cancer.