Dr. Duncan Howe,  Since 1997, Dr. Duncan Howe, has worked in the USC School of Medicine Office of Clinical Research and Special Projects as special projects coordinator.  In this role he is the coordinator for the USC-Kershaw and US -Bennettsville Primary Care Education Projects, and he supports the USC-Winnsboro Primary Care Education Project on an as-needed basis.

Each of these projects was established as a partnership between the School of Medicine and a rural family medicine center. The partnerships add value to the local practice and provide education, research, and clinical service opportunities for USC students and staff.  The projects are intended to encourage future health professionals to locate their practice sites in one of the many underserved rural communities in South Carolina. 

Dr. Howe’s main responsibility is to ensure that the mission and goals of these rural projects are effectively implemented.  To do this he obtains extramural funding for community health programs and manages these funds to maintain the projects’ education, research, and clinical service infrastructure.  To ensure consistency with the School of Medicine’s strategic goals, Dr. Howe also acts as a liaison between the Dean’s Office, the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, education specialists at each site, partner family medicine centers, partner hospitals at each location, local communities, and foundations that support the projects’ community health programs.

These programs support the projects’ education, research and clinical service objectives.  These include projects in health literacy, implementation of the Chronic Care Model in a primary care setting, development of community networks to reduce the prevalence of obesity, work site wellness, family literacy, improvement in the working poor’s access to a medical home, and use of telemedicine in a rural setting.

Dr. Howe assists in developing telemedicine and videoconferencing infrastructure used to deliver education, administrative, and clinical services to the rural primary care education projects and their partners. The existence of the project infrastructure, numerous community health programs, and good working relations with community health and social service agencies is being utilized to perform research in rural health care delivery.

Duncan B. Howe, Ph.D.

Special Projects Coordinator