Midway College, in the heart of Kentucky's Bluegrass region, recently announced it will open a pharmacy school in Paintsville, Ky., in the heart of the state's eastern coalfield. Now local investors are hoping the school gives the community something "other rural Appalachian communities have used as a serious economic driver," Dori Hjalmarson of the Lexington Herald-Leader reports. Similar professional schools in Grundy, Va.; Johnson City, Tenn.; and Harrogate, Tenn., were founded with the hope of added economic development they would bring to the region.
Sixteen years ago Paintsville officials had the opportunity to start an independent osteopathic medical school, but instead merged with the Pikeville College medical school that opened in 1997. Some Paintsville officials feared that plan would "lose money or that the school's goal of training doctors who would stay in Eastern Kentucky wouldn't pan out," Hjalmarson writes, but "as of last May, about 125 licensed doctors in Kentucky were Pikeville medical school graduates, and about 70 of those were in small Eastern Kentucky towns."
Midway College officials say the school is not just an economic-development strategem. "This school was not started to be an economic driver. It was started to serve a pressing social need," Midway President William Drake told Hjalmarson. Midway expects the school to have a $30 million annual impact on the local economy when it opens in 2011. Paintsville was chosen, in part, for its strong school systems. (Read more) You can read an Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues story about one of the school systems here).
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