Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine Dean Dr. Lee Learman at the school’s new site. Photo by Natalee Waters.

Virginia’s latest biennial budget includes a slate of expenditures designed to boost Roanoke as a health sciences hub, including funding for construction of a new medical school building and to study the feasibility of creating a regional high school to explore biomedicine career pathways.

“As we see the investment of the commonwealth coming in, it helps us to get to that next level sooner,” says Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine‘s dean, Dr. Lee Learman.

The state funding, healthcare leaders say, could help Roanoke recruit medical researchers and faculty, attract research grants and biopharmaceutical investments and create jobs.

“As much as it’s about health and research, it’s also about economic impact and creating jobs,” says Michael Friedlander, executive director of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at Virginia Tech Carilion.

The biennial budget allocates $1.96 billion in capital expenditures for state agencies and higher education. The money will fund 19 projects, including a new building for VTCSOM, as well as renovations to the medical school’s current space, which will be used by the biomedical research institute after the medical school vacates it, according to Josh Meyer, VTCSOM’s director of marketing and communications.

The budget also includes $13 million over two years to support enrollment growth and tuition subsidies for in-state students. Since the Roanoke medical school opened in 2010, VTCSOM students from Virginia have paid the same tuition as their out-of-state peers. Virginia Tech’s board of visitors is expected to implement the plan for lowering VTCSOM tuition rates.

Currently, VTCSOM has 222 students. The new building and funding will allow the medical school to increase its student body to about 400 — helping address a national physicians shortage and hopefully keeping more doctors in Virginia, according to Learman.

Additionally, the state budget includes a total of $14 million in operational support and equipment costs for the Virginia Tech Patient Research Center in Roanoke, which will initially focus on studying psychoses, an area with an urgent need for clinical research, Friedlander says.

The state budget also provides $250,000 for the Blue Ridge Partnership for Health Science Careers to explore the possibility of establishing a regional public high school with a biomedical focus.

“Doing something like this,” says the partnership’s board president, Cynthia Lawrence, “would secure the earliest stage of our talent pipeline.”

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