by Rita Manno for The Central Record

It was an amazing feat for the region and long overdue, the first school of medicine in South Jersey. Constructed in a record 17 months, the Cooper Medical School of Rowan University was finished in the summer of 2012 and welcomed its inaugural class of 50 students last fall.

The Camden school also attracted a premiere founding dean, Dr. Paul Katz, whose robust resume includes positions where he opened other medical schools and developed a strong working relationship with the National Institute of Health.

On March 12, Katz will come to Burlington County to speak to members of the Medford area branch of the American Association of University Women about a troubling topic: the lack of primary care physicians in New Jersey and the country and the lack of doctors entering specialist fields.

The U.S. will have 90,000 fewer physicians who are needed (by 2020), with half of this being in primary care and the rest specialists, said Katz in a preview of his remarks titled Who Will Care For Us: New Strategies.

Katz will suggest remedies for the shortages and how the medical community will provide care in the future patient-focused health care system. Katz said the shortages will be even more apparent since the Affordable Care Act will allow tens of millions more people to have primary care doctors and receive the care they deserve.

Cooper Medical School of Rowan University is a six-story, 200,000-square-foot, high-technology building where medical students work in small groups and are encouraged to participate in community service projects.

On a blog at http://www.rowan.edu/coopermed, Katz and his faculty members write about a variety of topics, including the massacre in Newtown, Conn., and the responsibility of doctors to talk to patients about firearms and lobby for expanded mental-health services.

In welcoming the first students at the school last September, Katz wrote, Those of us fortunate enough to be physicians have the remarkable privilege of getting into and impacting peoples lives as few others can.

Katz graduated from the Georgetown University School of Medicine in 1973, has served in positions at Georgetown University Medical Center, as a professor of medicine at the University of Miami and the founding vice dean for faculty and clinical affairs and professor of medicine at the Commonwealth Medical College in Scranton, Pa., where he helped launch the new medical school in 2009.

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Cooper Medical School of Rowan University dean to speak to Medford women's group