WAUSAU PILOT AND REVIEW

NEWS RELEASE — In summer 2016, MCW’s newly established Central Wisconsin campus welcomed its first class. Now, after completing the three-year accelerated curriculum, these students graduate medical school and continue their journeys in residency.

Each of the 2019 graduates have secured placements in residency programs in target specialties: family medicine, pediatrics, dermatology, radiology, anesthesiology and internal medicine. Eight will remain in Wisconsin.

Throughout the past three years, the students have been heavily engaged with the local Wausau community. They have worked on many community health projects in partnership with local nonprofits, government agencies, hospitals and schools, and learned from hundreds of local physicians in area hospitals, clinics and classrooms.

Including the students who will begin in July 2019, there are now 75 students enrolled at MCW- Central Wisconsin; 37 are from central and north central Wisconsin. For the academic year 2020 admissions cycle, 1,703 applications were received for MCW-Central Wisconsin’s 20 spots.

Keynote speaker Dr. Clare Helminiak is an MCW alumna of the class of 1982. She graduated with Doctor of Medicine and Masters of Public Health degrees. Dr. Helminiak completed her residency at Michigan State University and is board-certified in public health and general preventive medicine.

Dr. Helminiak served 23 years as a primary care physician and health care administrator with the Indian Health Service in New Mexico, Alaska, Montana and Arizona. She also served domestically and in Afghanistan for five years on the U.S. Afghan Health Care Reconstruction team. She is a retired rear admiral of the U.S. Public Health Service and served for two years as the medical advisor for homeland security affairs for Vice President Dick Cheney. In her role as the CMO and assistant surgeon general for the U.S. Public Health Service, Dr. Helminiak was responsible for providing leadership and coordination of medical professional affairs in support of the office of the surgeon general of the united states.

Top photo: Courtesy of Medical College of Wisconsin