A local resident was among the inaugural class of graduates of the state’s newest medical school.

Stephen Brown, D.O., graduated in the top of his 91-member class with a 4.0 GPA at William Carey University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine. He will be doing his residency at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in emergency medicine.

Brown explained there is little difference between doctor of osteopathic medicine and the allopathic doctors (M.D.’s) people are familiar with.

“It’s a little more looking at the body as a whole,” he said.

The qualifications for both types of doctors are the same. Osteopathic doctors take the same boards and participate in the same residencies as allopathic doctors.

Being a part of the first class meant being pushed very hard, Brown said.

“It was rough when they came to Hattiesburg,” he said. “It’s a new thing for Mississippi. They made it pretty tough on us.”

Brown explained the difficulty came from the necessity of ensuring all the students were getting the proper education. They used the first class to tweak the curriculum to make the program the best it could be.

“By now they’ve made it really great,” he said.

Brown spent the first two years of medical school at William Carey’s campus in Hattiesburg traveling back home to Brookhaven on the weekends. The next two years were spent doing rotations at Southwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center in McComb.

“I believe that William Carey has given me the knowledge and the experience to excel at my next step at UMC,” he said. “Looking back, I would have not chosen to go anywhere else for medical school.”

Brown is married to the former Kayla Case. They have a 4-year-old son, Casen, together. Kayla Brown works at Brookhaven OB-GYN Associates.

“And that’s what made it tough,” he said. “I had to see him grow up on the weekends.”

Brown graduated from Baptist College of Health Sciences in Memphis with a degree in nuclear medicine. He also has a doctorate in chiropractic medicine.

“I really look forward to starting the next step and am excited to come back to the area when residency is over,” he said. “I owe a lot of my success in school to my family.”

William Carey University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine is one of only 30 osteopathic medicine schools in the country and the only in Mississippi.

“This school’s design and reason was to bring more primary care doctors back to Mississippi and the surrounding states,” he said.