OU-COM graduates 31st class of physicians

111 medical students to participate in June 5 ceremony

The Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine hosts a noted orthopedic surgeon and alumnus as the keynote speaker at the college’s 31st commencement ceremony Saturday, June 5, in the Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium.

Charles T. Mehlman, D.O., M.P.H., FAOAO, who will address the graduates and guests at Saturday’s ceremony, is a pediatric
orthopaedic surgeon and professor of pediatric orthopaedic surgery at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in the Division of Pediatric Orthopaedic Surgery. He also serves the hospital as director of musculoskeletal outcomes research and director of pediatric orthopaedic resident education.  He is a 1989 graduate of OU-COM. 

An accomplished scholar, Mehlman has published more than 80 peer reviewed publications and nearly the same number of book chapters and other scholarly works on a full range of orthopedic diseases, deformity, trauma and tumors in children. He also has received numerous honors and awards for his research and scholarly publications, including OU-COM’s Medal of Merit in 2006. 

Through the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center’s Healing the Children program, Dr. Mehlman travels regularly to Shanghai, China, to volunteer medical service.

Ohio University President Roderick J. McDavis, Ph.D., will preside over the ceremony, and OU-COM Dean Jack Brose, D.O., FAAFP, will provide remarks and announce awards.

Robert S. Juhasz, D.O., FACOI, Trustee of the American Osteopathic Association (AOA) and a 2006 Honorary OU-COM Alumnus, will bring greetings from the AOA. Juhasz serves as the medical director at the Cleveland Clinic’s Willoughby Hills Family Health Center and is an associate clinical professor at OU-COM. 

Christopher J. Loyke, D.O., FACOFP (’88), immediate past president of the Ohio Osteopathic Association (OOA), will bring greetings from the organization. Loyke practices family medicine in Northfield, Ohio, and is a clinical associate professor of family medicine at OU-COM.

Timothy J. Barreiro, D.O., FCCP, FACOI (’97), board secretary of the OU-COM Society of Alumni and Friends and 2006 recipient of the OU-COM Recent Graduate Award, will extend greetings from the college’s alumni. Barreiro practices pulmonary critical care medicine in Youngstown and is a clinical assistant professor of critical care medicine at OU-COM. 

The graduates will join the ranks of 2,565 alumni, of which 60 percent practice in Ohio, with some 44 percent working in rural and underserved communities of fewer than 50,000 residents. Besides providing health care, the physicians also conduct research, scholarship and community service. Fifty-two percent of OU-COM alumni practice in primary care fields.

In a study published in April of this year, OU-COM was ranked as number one in Ohio and one of the top U.S. medical schools for graduating physicians who choose to practice in rural areas.

In the study, published in the April issue of Academic Medicine, OU-COM tied for 11th place among all medical schools in the country granting M.D. or D.O. degrees. The greatest percentages of OU-COM alumni practicing in rural areas graduated between 1988 and 1997.

According to the study, about 21 percent of OU-COM alumni were providing medical services in rural areas during 2005, the year the data was collected.