Bryan K. Richmond, M.D., M.B.A., F.A.C.S., vice-chair and professor of surgery at West Virginia University School of Medicine Charleston campus and section chief of general surgery at Charleston Area Medical Center, has been appointed to an endowed position as the inaugural William J. Maier, Jr. Chair of Research at West Virginia University’s Charleston campus.
Charleston’s Maier Foundation donated $1 million to the research fund, and matching gifts from the West Virginia Research Trust Fund and other sources have created a more than 2.3 million dollar trust to support basic scientific research addressing the health needs of West Virginians, focusing on early detection, improved treatments and technological advances that will ultimately improve outcomes for patients.
Richmond sees his new role as an exciting opportunity to expand research in the region.
“We will be drafting calls for proposals that address many different concerns,” Richmond said. “One may address projects directed towards the opioid crisis. Another may be directed towards disparities in all areas of healthcare relating to this region specifically.”
Dr. Richmond describes West Virginia, with respect to disparities research, as somewhat of a perfect laboratory. “In our state, you have racial disparities, socioeconomic disparities, rural versus urban disparities, and what you can learn there is of great interest right now both locally and nationally,” Richmond said. He also plans to explore research projects focused at day-to-day patient care. “We have a huge community hospital here that has an academic focus, providing primary care as well as tertiary care of patients and the net result is that you have a very diverse patient mix.”
Dr. Richmond also sees the endowment as a means of promoting faculty development in research. “We can, for example, host research workshops or boot camps that provide higher content than we may have been able to provide before, and if a department wanted to apply for a certain amount of money to send one of their promising investigators to an outcomes research course, that would now be possible,” Richmond said.
The Maier Foundation’s investment in this research chair serves to reinforce the importance of research during a time when the academic community faces budget and federal cuts as well as increasing demands to balance clinical work with publishing and other research activities.
“I think the balance in this healthcare environment that we’re in today is increasingly difficult because the time spent doing research is often times at the expense of clinical productivity,” Richmond said. “Having said that, research is an integral part of training in all of the medical specialties because scholarly activity and learning to perform research and to interpret it is essential in navigating the landscape of medicine, which is constantly changing.”
Richmond sees one of the advantages of the position as the ability to offset some of the expense related to the time spent doing research with actual pilot funding that will support investigators in generating more meaningful projects that can significantly impact patient care and lead to external funding that can then allow the project to be expanded to a much larger scale and have an even greater impact.
The Maier Foundation, and the Maier family, have played a vital role in the establishment and development of the WVU Charleston campus and its educational and research missions.
The Charleston campus of West Virginia University’s Health Sciences Center was formed in 1972 as part of a federal rural health initiative to expand medical schools beyond the traditional campus. An affiliation with the newly formed Charleston Area Medical Center (CAMC) to direct CAMC residency programs was also established that year. The program is now recognized as one of the nation’s oldest regional medical education campuses.
It was the Maier Foundation that provided the primary funding for the WVU Education Building at 3110 MacCorkle Avenue in Charleston in 1977, as well as Dunlop Hall and the Maier Village apartments that house many of the campus’s medical students and residents.
Serving in a position named for the patriarch of the Maier family has a great deal of meaning for Dr. Richmond both professionally and personally. “In my opinion, serving as the William J. Maier, Jr. Chair of Research increases the prestige factor dramatically and also for me, the sentimental factor, because I was a medical student here at the WVU Charleston campus. I was a resident here at CAMC. I lived in Dunlop Hall and Maier Village. I received the majority of my medical education in this building and all of these were gifts from the Maier family. I’m very, very honored to have this opportunity and I’m looking forward to working with all those here to ensure that the Maier family’s support of research here is well-founded,” Richmond said.
Richmond was recognized for his appointment in a ceremony at the WVU Health Sciences Center by Dr. John C. Linton, Associate Vice President of the WVU Charleston Campus and Dean of the campus’s school of medicine, Dr. Louise Veselicky, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs at West Virginia University, Brad Maier Rowe of the Maier Foundation and Dr. Roberto Kusminsky, Chair of the Department of Surgery.
Members of the Maier family and board members of the Maier Foundation, were also in attendance to recognize this important gift to foster research at the WVU Charleston campus.
