U.S. Sen. Gary Peters stressed the importance of medical training and research on a stop in Kalamazoo earlier today.
Peters, who was elected to the Senate in late 2014, arrived in the city to tour Western Michigan University’s new Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine. The senator met with business and university leaders, but it was Stryker Dean Hal Jenson who led the tour, demonstrating cutting-edge technologies in the school like an eight-classroom simulation center, with life-like mannequins for students to practice operating on.
After the tour, Peters spoke about the need for more funding for schools like Stryker to meet the growing need for medical care and research over the coming decades.
"We have baby boomers, who are now going into retirement, and during that, the population as they get older, the need for medical services goes up," Peters said. "We have to be training more physicians to be prepared to handle that. So it’s important that we increase that funding for the next generation of physicians."