Pipeline

"Amanda Fischer, a first-year family practice resident in her home state, is a Georgia AHEC success story. Area Health Education Centers (AHECs) were created to respond to the challenges of limited supply and distribution of health professionals in rural and underserved areas of the states in which they are located.    The center’s programs recruit students to health careers, support students during clinical training, and promote retention among practicing health care professionals.  Amanda spent a significant part of her education making her way through the AHEC pipeline."

"My mom always told me she gave me the "doctor name" (apparently my name looks good with an MD after it), so in some ways I knew from an early age that this was going to be my profession. Though I toyed with the idea of being a bank teller in kindergarten, I realized after a while that this was really not the job I thought it was (no offense to bank tellers, but you don't actually get to keep any of that money and the little vacuum tubes for the drive-thru probably lose their wow-factor eventually)."

"The MSU College of Human Medicine is increasing efforts to recruit students from medically underserved areas with the addition of Alma College to its group of Michigan university partners in the early assurance program for admissions."

"Florida is running dangerously low on a key resource. And we’re not talking oranges. In much of the Sunshine State, primary care physicians – internists, pediatricians, OB/GYNs and others who work in preventative medicine – are in short supply. That supply grows shorter every day."

"The Meharry Youth Wellness Center, which received $417,000 in startup funding, began offering preventive services to teens in the fall and will open its doctor-staffed clinic in January. The other initiative is a five-year program with $1.3 million for health career academies in Nashville public schools."

"In Sacramento, California, Residents from UC-Davis and Sutter Family & Community Medicine Programs in coordination with the California Academy of Family Physicians (CAFP) put our heads together to accomplish this task, creating the “Future Faces of Family Medicine” (FFFM) program to inspire a class of high school students to pursue a career in Family Medicine."

"The Gateway Medical Society, which consists of black doctors and is a Pittsburgh component of the Silver Spring, Md.-based National Medical Association, founded Journey to Medicine to provide role models to young, black males and to close the gap in racial disparities in health care."

"Arizona students from disadvantaged backgrounds who aspire to health profession careers will be helped by a $2.2 million Health Careers Opportunity Program, or HCOP, grant."

"An innovative program at the University of Missouri School of Medicine could help states deal with a dilemma in Washington, D.C. If deficit-reduction measures cut billions of dollars for training physicians who are already in short supply, who will care for the more than 30 million newly insured patients entering the health care system?"