President Langell addresses area leaders at Akron Roundtable

President John Langell was described as someone “from the future” during his introduction as the speaker of the Akron Roundtable on Feb. 15, 2024, by Michael Forbes, M.D., FCCM, FAAP. Dr. Forbes elaborated that “it’s around 2034 in Dr. Langell’s head,” recognizing his forward-thinking and ability to lay the groundwork to meet the medical needs of the community.

Dr. Langell demonstrated that vision as he shared many of the ways NEOMED is working to address unmet health care needs to a packed room of leaders from Northeast Ohio during his address.

After giving a brief history lesson and laying out the impact that NEOMED has on the region, noting that everyone in the room more than likely has a loved one who has been cared for by a NEOMED graduate, he laid out several goals the University is in the process of meeting – and in some cases, already met. Among those were the fact that NEOMED greatly improved the percentage of underrepresented minority students in the College of Medicine, and the addition of the Bitonte College of Dentistry as the newest of the University’s four colleges – noting that the lack of dental care access is the #1 unmet medical need in Ohio.

Dr. Langell also discussed the implementation of the Master of Medical Science in Anesthesia (M.M.Sc.A.) to address the shortage of Certified Anesthesiology Assistants needed in our health systems. The program is being used as a model for the upcoming Certified Mental Health Assistant program, that would address the urgent need for mental health professionals. Dr. Langell drove the point home by noting that 25% of Ohio residents face a significant mental health issue, as 100 people are lost to suicide each day. He added that current NEOMED programs like the Best Practices in Schizophrenia Treatment (BeST) Center and Crisis Intervention Team training have made a major impact on the mental health community by helping people identify first cases of psychosis and training police officers to identify and safely deescalate situations when someone is heaving a mental health crisis.

See additional coverage in the Akron Beacon Journal.