From the Chair

Welcome to the Department of Family Medicine at Michigan State University. We were the first university-based, academic department of family medicine in the state of Michigan, founded in 1975 under the leadership of Roy Gerard, MD. Roy was an excellent choice as founding chair, having started one of the first family medicine residency programs in the country in Saginaw, Michigan, which grew out of his own community practice.

The mission of the Department is to advance family medicine and the health of communities (see mission statement). Since those early days, the Department has grown in size and stature, becoming recognized as one of the lead departments in the nation. We have 34 faculty in East Lansing and over 70 community affiliate residency faculty in nine programs (East Lansing, Grand Rapids, Flint [2], Traverse City, Marquette, Saginaw, Midland, and Kalamazoo) and nearly 700 volunteer clinical faculty.

The College of Human Medicine (CHM) has two four-year campuses in East Lansing and Grand Rapids respectively, now educating 200 students per year. Our students spend the first two years on either of these two main campuses, then they begin clinical training in our community campuses all over the state. Family Medicine faculty are sought after for teaching topics across the curriculum including clinical skills, problem based-learning, focused lectureships, evidence-based medicine, critical appraisal/analytic medicine, mentoring, and our eight week required clerkship in family medicine. All of our residency programs are fully accredited and residency faculty are participating in core activities of the College. We also have several of our faculty leading our academic programs as assistant and associate deans in our community campuses.

The Department is heavily invested in nationally recognized research on optimal aging, health promotion and disease prevention, and primary care health service/delivery. We have established two divisions; one on geriatrics/gerontology with four affiliate fellowship programs and a combined curriculum, and the other on public health and prevention which has affiliations with 35 medical directors in public health programs across the state. These efforts have resulted in over $6 million in extramural support to address major research questions.

Our clinical faculty are actively engaged in the care of persons of all ages across the state of Michigan. Including our nine affiliate residency programs, MSU-CHM Family Medicine impacts the lives of nearly 200,000 persons receiving medical care in Michigan.

Our clinical faculty have taken on leadership roles as hospital chiefs of staff, chairs of hospital clinical departments, directors of CME, designated institutional officers for graduate medical education, and state-wide and national champions in medical societies. Many of our clinical faculty are recognized by their peers as Best Doctors by Who's Who.

We invite you to enjoy reviewing our website. We encourage you to participate in events. Please contact us. We want to hear from you!

William Wadland, MD, MS
Chair, MSU Department of Family Medicine