Medical School Grant

The National Institutes of Health has awarded a $114,355 grant to the Dartmouth Medical School for establishment of a Department of Maternal and Child Health, which will complete the academic structure needed to support its new three-year M.D. program. The award supplements a five-year Special Improvement Grant totaling more than $1.9 million, awarded the School in 1969, under which Departments of Surgery and Community Medicine have already been established.

Additional support in excess of $200,000 annually for the federal fiscal years 1973 and 1974 was recommended by NIH. These future funds are subject to Congressional appropriation.

The new Department of Maternal and Child Health will combine functions performed in the traditional medical curriculum by the Departments of Obstetrics-Gynecology and Pediatrics. Dean Carleton B. Chapman said that the department will also initiate research on improving the delivery of health care service to mothers and children throughout rural Northern New England.

Dartmouth Medical School last fall inaugurated a pilot three-year M.D. program characterized by refinement of traditional course content and reduction of time requirements. By the late 1970's the three M.D. classes will reach a projected total enrollment of nearly 200 students.