Institutional News, Vitals Magazine Spring 2026

Facing Uncertainty
With Resilience

A note from leadership.

Published: 
By Joanne M. Conroy, MD, and Steven D. Leach, MD
2 min read
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Healthcare has always demanded ingenuity. Nowhere is that more true than in rural northern New England, where patients may drive for hours through the mountains to see a specialist, where a single rural clinic can serve as a community’s entire safety net, and where the distance between the care people need and the care they can reach is something we think about every day.

That challenge has shaped who we are, both at Dartmouth Health and at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. As the nation’s most rural academic medical community, we know that the most effective treatments in the world mean little if the people who need them most cannot reach them. That conviction runs through everything we do: how we train physicians, how we deliver care, and the research questions we pursue.

It’s also what equips us for a moment like this one. Federal funding is under pressure in ways that have real consequences for the clinical trials that expand treatment options, for the researchers who dedicate their careers to advancing science, and for the patients counting on both. Large-scale grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), for example, sustain the pipeline that connects a promising idea in a laboratory to a life changed in an exam room. Today, the stakes could not be higher for the communities we serve.

We are finding ways to remain steadfast to our mission despite the pressures facing institutions like ours across the country.

Joanne M. Conroy, MD, and Steven D. Leach, MD

But this is precisely the kind of challenge our community was built to meet. Through ingenuity and a sustained commitment of our faculty, researchers, and clinicians to find a way regardless of circumstance, we are remaining steadfast in our missions despite the pressures facing institutions like ours across the country.

The result: Over the past six years, NIH funding to Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center has grown from $8 million to more than $20 million, moving us from 32nd to 25th among independent hospitals nationally, according to the latest Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research rankings. Geisel also witnessed a $22 million year-over-year gain in NIH funding, and the Department of Microbiology and Immunology broke into the top ten among peer departments at U.S. medical schools for NIH funding this year, rising from 12th to 9th.

Joanne M. Conroy, MD
CEO and President,
Dartmouth Health

Steven D. Leach, MD
Dean (Interim),
Geisel School of Medicine

In uncertain times, private generosity has proven equally vital and equally ingenious. Our institutions have built a philanthropic model where investment doesn’t just fill gaps—it multiplies. For example, every dollar raised through philanthropy to support research at Dartmouth Cancer Center generates an additional $12 in large-scale national grants. The Byrne Family Cancer Research Institute, now surpassing $50 million in philanthropic support, has helped attract an additional $110 million in research grants since 2022, drawing top talent and accelerating discovery. We are deeply grateful to the donors whose generosity provides stability when it is needed most, and whose vision continues to strengthen the foundation that makes this work possible.

We have navigated uncertainty before. And ingenuity, we’ve learned, is its own pathway to health. It’s who we are, and it fuels our momentum.

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