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Connecting With the Community

BCOM faculty, staff, and students were out and about this month, connecting with other members of the community and sharing the BCOM mission!


Members of the BCOM Student Organization COMPASS participated in the La Mesa Lions Health and Community Fair in La Mesa, New Mexico. The COMPASS student organization seeks to empower communities in Las Cruces and the surrounding region through education, awareness, self-sufficiency and unity, through community outreach and health literacy initiatives.

BCOM hosted leaders from Texas Tech University Health Science Center – El Paso & Paul Foster School of Medicine (TTUHSC / PFSOM). BCOM respects and appreciates all that TTUHSC does for our regional community & looks forward to developing collaborative initiatives. Pictured here from left to right: Richard Lange, MD, President of TTUHSC & Dean, PFSOM; John Hummer, President of BCOM; Paul Ogden, MD, Provost and VP for Academic Affairs, TTUHSC; and Don Peska, DO, Dean & Chief Academic Officer, BCOM.

BCOM medical students Robyn Marks and Kareem Shahin are in Las Vegas, New Mexico for their third year clinical clerkships. They supported the local community by volunteering at a Color Fun Run sponsored by El Centro Family Health to benefit suicide prevention education at the local schools.

A group of third year medical students volunteered at the Festival de la Salud at Sunland Park Mall in El Paso where they interacted with over 100 people and were able to practice their Spanish. Pictured left to right: Hugo Gonzalez, Jennifer Burkett, Gabriel Pontipiedra, Dr. Hector Lopez, Carlos Yeelot, Mikhail De Jesus, and Chris Kim. The students were invited to the event by Burkett’s clinical preceptor, El Paso-based family medicine physician Hector Lopez, DO, of Epic Health Services.

BCOM hosted the NMSU WAVE Rx coalition for a Prescription Opioid Abuse Inter-Professional Roundtable discussion. BCOM and NMSU students, faculty, and staff, along with community members, attended the event. NMSU WAVE Rx collaboratively identifies and implements evidence-based practices to increase protective behaviors and decrease negative consequences associated with abuse of alcohol and prescription opioids in our community. BCOM’s Director of Student Affairs, Brett Newcomer, is a member of the WAVE Rx coalition at NMSU.

Senior and mid-management team members from First American Bank toured the BCOM campus to learn more about the medical school, osteopathic medicine, and to experience the state-of-the-art,high-tech facilities such as the Simulation Lab and the Virtual Anatomy Lab.

NMSU’s Presidential Ambassador Program, a student leadership program, toured the BCOM campus to learn more about the medical school and its facilities. The knowledge gained from the tour will be an asset for the NMSU Presidential Ambassadors when speaking to the campus to campus partnership.

BCOM’s Vice President of Institutional Advancement Victoria Pineda and her husband Richard took Academy Award nominees Edward James Olmos and Kathleen Quinlan on a tour of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Olmos and Quinlan are in Las Cruces filming the motion picture Walking with Herb.