Dean Bonita Stanton Discusses New Medical School

Steve Adubato goes on-location to the Seton Hall Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine to speak with its Founding Dean, Dr. Bonita Stanton. Dean Stanton talks about the importance of students studying in a teams rather than lecture settings.

3/24/17 #2022

Excerpt:

"This is Steve Adubato on location, but more importantly, it is my honor to speak with Dean, Doctor Dean Bonita Stanton who is the founding Dean at Seton Hall, Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine. Dean, we are here on the site that in July of 2018, this school of medicine will open. How exciting. It is tremendously exciting. We still have our work to do ahead of us to turn that into a reality, but it is unbelievably exciting and it has been a pure joy so far. Now you've been in medicine and research for a few years and talk to us about what it is about this place that drew you here, but also more importantly, what you see for the people of this state and this region in moving forward. My career has been in large measure focused on health in equity and in the United States we have the largest inequity in health outcomes of any of the industrialized nations. That means that overall, our health indexes are poor compared to the other industrialized nations but it is not that our upper half income bracket isn't doing just fine. They're doing quite well. Not as good as some of the nations, but quite well. It is the lower income half who is doing very very poorly and there is no reason for that. That does not have to happen in the United States. It is not that we're not putting enough money into it. Indeed, we are putting far more money into our healthcare system in the United States than the other industrialized nations. I'm not talking about all nations. So, clearly, we're not spending our dollars right and we haven't had a kind of focus on what is going wrong. Where are the problems with, not just our health delivery system, there has been some look at that, but also our health education system and so that is why it is so meaningful to me as someone who's whole career has been looking at inequities to have this chance to create a medical school who will, along with a couple of our sister medical schools, begin the process of delivering the kind of healthcare the US deserves so we have good health outcomes. Dean, let me follow up on that. Describe one academic research activity that you see taking place here that could help bridge that gap, make some progress, and change the kind of situation that is totally unacceptable by any reasonable standard in this great country. Sure. Loaded question I know. No, this is a great question and it's the kind of question I wish more people were asking themselves. So you might ask what's causing..."