Memphis could see better health outcomes
New chancellor sees UTHSC leading medical innovation
Tennessee has many poor health outcomes, both for children and adults, and low access to care, and Buckley sees UTHSC poised to fuel improvements.
In the artwork, he was explaining, the boy had jettisoned the usual superheroes, Batman and Spiderman. “They're in the trash can,” Peter Buckley, the new chancellor at the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center, was saying about the Zoom meeting background he'd chosen.
“Instead,” Buckley said about the boy in the artwork, “he has a nurse.”
The nurse, wearing a superhero cape and N95 mask, is soaring, waving to the boy in overalls making her fly. The art raised millions for the British health care system, Buckley said. He called it a nod to the “healthcare heroes” and the impact the pandemic has had on public opinion of the field he's continuing to lead.
This was mid-january, the overwhelming peak of the omicron COVID-19 variant in Memphis, and Buckley was orchestrating his move to Harbor Town from his previous leadership position at Virginia Commonwealth University. A quick 8-minute drive to campus, he'll have a view of the
Mississippi River and his Great Dane, Harley, can galavant along the Greenbelt.
Buckley said he has quickly appreciated Memphis' vibrancy, rich culture and community. Here, he's bringing his appreciation for his Irish heritage and Great Danes and is poised to guide UTHSC'S influence across the state and into rural areas, as the field balances heightened interest but greater burnout, all while attempting to sustainably increase its diversity so more patients have more doctors who look like them.
Tennessee has many poor health outcomes, both for children and adults, and low access to care, and Buckley sees UTHSC poised to fuel improvements. Strengths come in the dental school, and a proposed momentum shift: “Memphis (is) our home, but Tennessee is our campus,” he told the campus in February during an address.
Rhodes College, the University of Memphis, Christian Brothers University and Lemoyne-owen College have all seen or will see leadership changes amid the pandemic, with new leaders who are distilling
or refocusing the work of their institutions.
As Buckley succeeds 12-year Chancellor Steve Schwab — who had a “remarkable tenure, not just by time, but by accomplishment,” Buckley told campus — he plans to build on the statewide foundations Schwab laid.
Psychiatric research brought Buckley to America
Prior to becoming the UTHSC chancellor, Buckley was dean of the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, a position he held since 2017. In January 2020, he was appointed as interim CEO of the Virginia Commonwealth University Health System and led its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Before that, he was the School of Medicine dean at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta. And there, he and Schwab overlapped, both as doctors.
Buckley began the job there in 2000, in an “unusual job” due to its circumstances: The prior head of the department of psychiatry had been incarcerated for research fraud, and Buckley was there to turn it around.
His research in schizophrenia is what led him to the United States from Ireland, where he was born. Buckley and his wife, Leonie, emigrated from Ireland and came to America in 1992, where Buckley worked at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.
There, he worked with two “big shots” in the field of treatment of schizophrenia, and a new drug came available.
The results earned the group an article in Time magazine.
“I was mesmerized,” Buckley said. Over time, his treatment research has grown to now focus on genetic components of mental illness, including in Black populations. He is bringing grants on that work to UTHSC, to strengthen the campus' existing department of psychiatry.
“But of course, I'm not being hired for my research activity,” Buckley said of the position he began Feb. 1. “...My job is to be a great ambassador, champion for UTHSC.”
Memphis dental school growth source of statewide effort
UTHSC is amid a $45 million revamp of its College of Dentistry and hopes to increase its student class, too. Included in Gov. Bill Lee's budget proposal are funds that would facilitate a UTHSC partnership expanding access to dental care in rural areas, Buckley wrote to students earlier this year.
“UTHSC is the state's only dental school. That's not unusual,” Buckley told The Commercial Appeal. “But it's also the only dental school for Arkansas.”
National figures, Buckley said, show about 60 dentists per 100,000 people, and in Tennessee, the figure is slightly less, at 50 dentists per 100,000.
“Of course, dental care is easily accessible in Nashville and in Memphis, but in rural Appalachian Tennessee, it falls to four per 100,000,” he said.
UTHSC has a responsibility to “up our game” with statewide partnerships, he said.
“It not only gives dental students training in these areas, but it's like anywhere: you go somewhere, you like the place, the people like you, you graduate, you stay there,” Buckley said.
The dental work exemplifies a timeless mission of UTHSC.
“What we need to do is to up our game in terms of the capacity to train tomorrow's workforce, the numbers, but also the retention of tomorrow's workforce,” Buckley said. “And then, of course, also the diversity, so that the diversity of providers, mirrors, ideally, the diversity of the community that they work in.”
Expanded footprint, diversity among Buckley's focuses
Across the state, UTHSC has established additional research campuses beyond the main Memphis campus to Knoxville, Nashville and Chattanooga. Buckley hopes to continue to build them out as training facilities while focusing on their strengths, such as the audiology research in Knoxville.
His work at UTHSC will also include building out relationships in Memphis, such as with the University of Memphis, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and the medical device industry. Buckley has said he wants to also increase philanthropic gifts to the university to support the growth; at VCU'S school of medicine last year, he said, philanthropic gifts rose from $28 million to $66 million.
A portion of the gifts funded a Dean's Equity scholarship.
“This year, we have the most diverse medical school class ever,” Buckley said of VCU. “That's not a coincidence.”
Diversity means more than just nurturing an existing pipeline to UTHSC medical school for minority students, he said, but also making scholarships and funding available.
“...because we're not producing a diverse enough workforce nationally (in the medical field),” Buckley said. “And then when you have very talented people from minority backgrounds, the sky's the limit for them: They have opportunities in other states and other programs. And so we need to be competitive” with training and scholarships, he said.
Reports abound of healthcare burnout amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but the awareness of what the field can do and how medical professionals create vaccines and other new pharmaceuticals has increased interest in the profession. It “brings the Banksy image alive,” Buckley said, a reference to the artist's "healthcare hero" artwork acting as his Zoom background.
“There's great work to be done on the heels of this pandemic, which I think gives us a wind in our sails that we've never had before with a great public appreciation of what academic medicine does,” Buckley said, “as well as the need for having doctors, nurses, dentists, and all the health care personnel that we need for tomorrow.”
Laura Testino covers education and children's issues for the Commercial Appeal. Reach her at laura.testino@commercialappeal.com or 901-512-3763. Find her on Twitter: @Ldtestino