Faculty Spotlight: Marvin Moe Bell, MD, MPH

Dr. Bell has dedicated his career to training family physicians.

“For over 30 years, I have been teaching residents,” he said. “That’s 30 years’ worth of family physicians that I helped train. I like to think that I had a positive impact on their careers by showing them how to be a caring physicians and how to really listen to patients, be there for them and also think about prevention.”

Dr. Bell is the director of the MD/MPH Program at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix and a clinical professor in Family, Community and Preventive Medicine.

He was appointed as a clinical lecturer in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the college in 1989. Since then, he has held various roles as a clinical professor, doctoring course faculty and his recent role as director of the MD/MPH Program, which he began in 2014.

“I love public health, and I love prevention,” Dr. Bell said. “This was the perfect fit of my combined public health interest and my interest in medical education.”

Dr. Bell said he always knew he wanted to pursue medical education, but didn’t know it would happen so soon in his career. Less than two years after completing his residency in 1984, Dr. Bell received an offer to return and teach at Scottsdale Memorial Family Practice Residency.

“Throughout my years of teaching, my favorite memories are those where you see a student or a resident and they have that look on their face that they just understood something brand new, that ‘ah-ha’ moment,” he said.

Dr. Bell’s innate desire to help people was the main reason he chose medicine. He currently works for the Neighborhood Outreach Access to Health (NOAH) clinic, a federally qualified health center in the Phoenix area.

“I chose family medicine as my specialty because I loved the emphasis in prevention and treating the whole person, not just the symptom,” he said.

Dr. Bell recently received the ninth annual Thomas Wachtel, MD, Clinical Excellence Award for exemplary leadership, medical education and patient safety.

“I am very grateful and humbled to be recognized in this way,” he said. “I feel that my legacy is several hundred fine family physicians, who I helped to train, and some important quality improvement measures I helped to implement that have made my home hospital (HonorHealth Scottsdale Osborn Medical Center) a safer place to be, and I am pretty sure has saved some lives.”

Dr. Bell received a bachelor’s of arts in chemistry at Occidental College and his medical degree at University of Southern California Medical School. His residency was at Scottsdale Memorial Family Practice Residency.

His advice to students: “Pursue what you are passionate about. Follow your heart, have no regrets and remember that this is one of most incredible professions that you can pick.”