Pediatrician involved from infancy of Hackensack Meridian medical school is its new dean

Dr. Jeffrey Boscamp, a longtime leader at Hackensack Meridian Health who filled in as the medical school's interim dean after the sudden death of Dr. Bonita Stanton, has been named dean of the fledgling institution, which graduated its first physicians last year.

Boscamp, a pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases, has been involved with the medical school since the idea for its founding was first discussed more than a decade ago, the school's announcement said. He was a co-chair of the committee that invited Stanton to become its founding dean, and then served as vice dean himself. His appointment followed a nationwide search, the statement said.

Calling him a "visionary educator," Robert C. Garrett, the CEO of the Hackensack Meridian Health system, said he looks forward to seeing Boscamp lead the school into an "even brighter future." Boscamp will hold the Robert C. and Laura C. Garrett Endowed Chair for the School of Medicine Dean.

"This school has been like a baby to me," Boscamp said, using a pediatric analogy. "Now I get to channel it from infancy to adolescent."

The school's initial years have been focused on securing the necessary accreditation to award degrees, but "now I can really focus on aspirational goals: why we started a new medical school," he said.

And that includes training a new generation of doctors who are focused on the social, economic and environmental factors that contribute so much to a person's health.

From their first day, students learn about how access to health care, inequities in access and treatment, and people's behavior determine their health, he said. The students work in pairs with a family during their three or four years in medical school and learn about their experience of health care. One student pair, having learned about a family's problems getting transportation from a Paterson housing project to their doctor's appointments, helped to get a new bus route established between the project and St. Joseph's University Medical Center, Boscamp said.

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Occupying a campus that formerly served as the headquarters for Hoffmann-La Roche, the medical school welcomed its first class of 60 in 2018. Of the inaugural class, 18 graduated last year through a unique, accelerated three-year program. In June, another 63 students from the first and second classes graduated. Most have taken residency positions with Hackensack Meridian hospitals.

This year's incoming class included more than 160 students chosen from 6,000 applicants. After it was founded in a partnership with Seton Hall University, the medical school is now fully independent and this year received full accreditation from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. The next milestone is expected to be final accreditation from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, a major national regulatory body from which it received provisional accreditation in February 2021.

Boscamp is co-director of a basic first-year science class called "immunity, infection and cancer." At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, he chose eight medical students to read and summarize titles from the onslaught of quickly emerging research on the origins, symptoms and treatments for the disease. Their work — capsules of 70 papers in six weeks — helped clinicians who were overwhelmed with patients, and was written up in the journal "Academic Medicine." He also teaches a popular wine appreciation course.

Boscamp, 67, joined Hackensack University Medical Center in 1987 and was chair of pediatrics at the Joseph M. Sanzari Children's Hospital in Hackensack for 14 years before moving to the medical school. He founded the pediatric infectious diseases program and the Steven Bader Immunological Institute at Hackensack University Medical Center. He lives in Harlem.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Hackensack Meridian medical school names new dean