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The Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine announces the promotion of Hershey Bell, MD, MS (Med Ed), as Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean of the LECOM School of Pharmacy. Dr. Bell replaces Donald Tuttle, PharmD, who served as the pharmacy school dean at the College for five years.

Hershey Bell, MD, MS (Med Ed)

Dr. Bell began teaching at LECOM as Clinical Professor of Family Medicine and Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Evaluation in 2004. He will continue to oversee faculty development, the Master of Science in Medical Education program, and the Teaching and Learning Center.

Dr. Bell brings a vast and diversified history of leadership experience to the School of Pharmacy. Prior to coming to the College, Dr. Bell had served as Director of the Family Medicine Residency Program at Hunterdon Medical Center in Flemington, N.J.; Chief of the Division of Family Medicine and Vice-Chair of the Department of Community and Family Medicine at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina; and Senior Vice President for Primary Care, Medical Education and Quality at Hamot Medical Center in Erie. Dr. Bell also served as Hamot’s first Chief Medical Officer.

Through his work in the quality arena and almost two decades of full service family practice, Dr. Bell has gained a thorough understanding of the important role that all health professionals play in the American health care system. He has worked with a number of health care organizations leading retreats to better position them in the larger health care picture. Among his many responsibilities at LECOM, Dr. Bell has been involved in the implementation of LECOM’s strategic plan. Dr. Bell also plays a key role in the process that maintains accreditation with the American Osteopathic Association, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, and the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

Dr. Bell has been a leading scholar in medical education. Throughout the 1990s and prior to the accreditation councils’ decisions to make competency-based education the central model for medical education, Dr. Bell led a task force of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine that established core competencies for all physicians, including practicing within health systems with teams of health care professionals. His seminal paper, “Competency-based Education in Family Medicine” served as a spearhead for efforts at establishing required core competencies for physicians. Dr. Bell participated on the committee that wrote the six core allopathic physician competencies, and he participated with the American Osteopathic Association and the National Board of Osteopathic Medical Examiners to develop the seven osteopathic core competencies. He has 17 peer-reviewed publications on topics germane to health professions education and has presented at more than 100 meetings nationwide. He is widely acknowledged as a leading voice for competency-based education in America and was recognized with the Mid-Career Achievement Award of the Northeast Section of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine in 2001 for his efforts.

Evidence of Dr. Bell’s strong communication and interpersonal skills can be seen by his consistently high teaching evaluations and his successes in the grants arena. Based upon a thorough review of his teaching accomplishments, Dr. Bell was named as charter fellow in the National Academy of Osteopathic Medical Educators in 2009. Among the grants that Dr. Bell has worked on at LECOM include projects in complementary and alternative medicine, establishment of a model curriculum in clinical skills, development of the Center for Drug Information and Research, and projects related to the assessment of medical student competency. Dr. Bell has maintained an active research interest in pedagogy and competency-based education. He is currently involved in extramurally supported research seeking to identify precursors of clinical competency issues in first and second year medical students.

Dr. Bell has earned a reputation as a creative catalyst at LECOM and has been instrumental in collaboratively developing and implementing many key initiatives including the Teaching and Learning Center, the Office of Planning and Institutional Assessment (through which a revised faculty and curriculum assessment plan were introduced) the Medical Applications of Science and Health Program for high school students, a revamped Orientation process for the medical school, the Primary Care Scholars Pathway, and most notably, the highly successful Master of Science in Medical Education program which, as of January 2010, will have enrolled over 60 candidates including Drs. Dolores Kutzer, Anthony Randolph, and Julie Wilkinson from the School of Pharmacy. Due to these efforts and others, Dr. Bell was honored as a 2009 recipient of the John and Silvia Ferretti Award for Distinguished Teaching at LECOM.

Dr. Bell has been a longstanding member of the American Academy of Family Physicians (having earned fellowship status in that organization), the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine, and, more recently, the American Osteopathic Association. With his background in medicine and medical education, he is eager to collaborate with others in the pharmaceutical profession and looks forward to contributing to leading pharmacy associations at the local, state and national level.

A native of Toronto, Ontario, he is the son of immigrant parents and is in the first generation in his family to complete high school, college and professional school. He attended University College at the University of Toronto as an undergraduate, majoring in mathematics, and then matriculated at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. He completed residency education in family medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto and at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. Following residency, he served as a National Faculty Development Fellow at Duke.