MEET LOCAL LEGEND: Christine C. Matson, M.D.

BIOGRAPHY

Growing up on an isolated rural ranch in western Kansas, Christine Matson was inspired by two family doctors who visited the sprawling prairie around the time she was born and stayed to provide the only medical care for hundreds of miles around. Later, as an undergraduate at the University of Kansas, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa in psychology, she harkened back to those two family physicians and their unsparing dedication. "I realized they had been part of an extended rural family in those small towns. It helped me to decide to pursue family medicine and serve others."

Service to others has been the cornerstone of Christine Matson's outstanding career in family medicine and medical education where she has pioneered and led in efforts to revamp medical curriculums and provide students with challenging clinical exposure throughout their entire years of training.

She has been described as the "heart and soul of the nationally recognized medical curriculum" at Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS) where she is a professor and chair of the Department of Family and Community Medicine. She also serves as associate dean for education at EVMS where she has led in the development of a curriculum that combines basic and clinical science with an emphasis on the development of competent and compassionate clinicians.

Nominated as a Local Legend by Representative J. Randy Forbes (R-VA-4th), Christine Matson has devoted her career to increasing the number of general practice physicians and has helped make EVMS a model for this effort. The program at EVMS that she leads is one of only two programs in the country combining family and internal medicine.

A graduate of the Baylor College of Medicine where she later did her internship and residency, Christine Matson served as acting chair of Baylor's Department of Family Medicine and was the winner of the Leonard Moise Award for Outstanding Teacher at Baylor in 1993.

Evan R. Farmer, M.D. and Dean and Provost at EVMS, said this about her:

"Dr. Matson brings to medicine an impeccable integrity and a deep commitment to the well being of others. This is reflected in her exquisite care of patients, and the intellectual development of students and residents. Dr. Matson represents that which is the very best in American medicine."

In 1999 she received the Lloyd Damsey Award for Outstanding Faculty at EVMS. In 2000, Christine Matson was the first EVMS recipient of the Women in Medicine Professional Achievement Award. In 2002 she received the Dean's Faculty Achievement Award in Institutional Service from EVMS.

She has served as a peer reviewer for several journals and is widely published with numerous abstracts, editorials, reviews, chapters and commentaries.

In 1996, Christine Matson was the first EVMS fellow selected for the Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) program for women-one of only 33 fellows from the United States and Canada selected that year.