GREENVILLE – ECU Chancellor Cecil Staton is proud that ECU’s Brody School of Medicine puts more primary-care doctors into rural and underserved areas than any other medical school in the state – and more than all but one other school in the nation.

“If North Carolina didn’t have ECU, it’d be in a world of hurt,” Staton says in the accompanying video.

“We’re very proud of the fact that … we are certainly No. 1 in the state of North Carolina for producing doctors who are going to be in family medicine and stay in state.  But we also are No. 2 in the entire nation in terms of the percentages that we do that,” Staton says.

Brody was also recognized last year for producing graduates with the lowest student debt of any medical school in the nation.

“Why is that important?  If you want a physician to stay in rural North Carolina, and you want them to practice in these small communities, you can’t send them there with a huge amount of debt which is impossible to pay.  Then obviously they’re going to have to go to a major metropolitan area.  So we think we’ve got the right formula,” Staton says.

“Brody is an engine that is producing for the state, and when you have an engine producing, we really need to make more investment in that engine.  Because North Carolina needs more of what Brody does.”