Magazine ranks ECU sixth among primary care medical schools

GREENVILLE, N.C.  —   The Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University is again ranked among the top medical schools that emphasize primary care, according to the annual listing of the best professional schools by U.S. News & World Report magazine.

ECU is sixth among primary care schools, the same as last year. ECU also leads the ranked primary care medical schools with 68 percent of its graduates entering primary care, defined by U.S. News as family practice, pediatrics and internal medicine.

“It’s a strong reflection on the commitment to the mission of the school to prepare graduates for primary care roles,” said Dr. Phyllis Horns, interim vice chancellor for health sciences at ECU and interim dean of the Brody School of Medicine.

In rural medicine, the school is ninth, down two spots from last year.

The U.S. News rankings of U.S. professional schools — business, education engineering, law and medicine — will be available on newsstands Monday, April 2. In medicine, the magazine considered the 125 accredited U.S. medical schools and 19 schools of osteopathic medicine.

This year, the University of Washington was again rated the top primary care school. Harvard University ranked first in the ranking of top medical schools that emphasize research.

Rankings for primary care schools are based on a weighted average of seven indicators, four of them common for research- and primary care-focused schools. The primary care model also considered the number of graduates entering primary care residencies.