06/18/2026
Last week, NCAFP leaders attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the new Methodist University Cape Fear Valley Health School of Medicine facility in Fayetteville. The ceremony officially opened the new medical school and celebrated its students, leaders, and ambitions to improve the region’s health care. This summer, it will welcome its first class of medical students.
NCAFP member and Founding Dean Dr. Hershey Bell summed up the school’s mission beautifully during his speech at the ceremony: “This building represents vision, sacrifice, partnership, generosity, and years of extraordinary work by countless people who believe this community deserves its own medical school. Years from now, people won't remember the square footage of the building or the specifics of the technology, but they'll remember the physician who sat beside them after a devastating diagnosis — the physician who listened, the physician who stayed late, the physician who cared. And that's the purpose of this building.”
Congratulations to Dr. Bell, as well as the school’s Founding Family Medicine Division Head (and past NCAFP president) Dr. Chuck Rich, and all the other leaders who have worked to make this new medical school possible!
