Madeleine Coles
News Editor
ISU was recently awarded a grant for $386,250 to establish an area health education center or AHEC.
The money is part of a $3 million grant awarded to the University of Washington for their WWAMI program, which trains health professionals in Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho.
The purpose of the AHEC, which will be located in the Institute of Rural Health is to increase the number of health professionals in the workforce, especially in rural and underserved areas, according to Dr. Elizabeth Fore, interim director of the IRH.
She added that the center will be hugely beneficial because nearly every county in Idaho is medically underserved.
The center will feature a pipeline section, which works toward interesting high school students in health professions. It will also focus on multiple disciplines working together; students, pharmacists, physician assistants, nurses and other health professionals will be working together on one team.
“That’s a big part of the grant because especially in rural areas, there aren’t enough patients to support having an M.D.,” Fore said. “So it’s going to be our nurses and our physician assistants who are going to be serving these populations.”
Another facet of the center will be continuing education training for people already working in their disciplines.
But perhaps the most important part of the center, according to Fore, is the opportunity it will provide for students to experience hands-on work.
“Our students will go out into the rural areas to do internships and field experience,” she said. “And if you’re working in a rural area, especially if you’re from a rural area, you’ll be more likely to go back.”
Funds for the grant will be used toward appointing a program director as well as a promotora, which is a community member, typically seen in Latin/Hispanic communities, who is not a health professional but is trained to provide basic health education to patients. The promotora will train health profession students.
“[Students] are usually only seeing health care from the professional standpoint, and by training as a promotora, they’re going to see what it’s like to be part of the community and see what patients encounter on an individual basis,” Fore said.
Some money will also be put toward an AHEC scholars program, which according to Fore will be a “curriculum for health profession students who will get additional training beyond what they need to do for their academic program here.”
In terms of training, Fore said ISU has many existing programs and classes that fit within AHEC education. “We’re going to capitalize on what’s already existing here, and add more to it,” she said.
According to Fore, the AHEC will be of great benefit for both students and community members. For students, they will gain more hands-on experience working within rural communities. For the communities themselves, they will gain more access to healthcare.
Training for health professionals in a rural community comes with a few challenges, one of the largest being transportation. In addition, there is less access to services, such as mental health care.
According to Fore, the biggest necessity when training students to work in these conditions is understanding.
“You can read about it, but until you actually experience working in a rural community, if you’re not from a place like that, I don’t think you can really understand it,” she said.
Fore hopes that the training and understanding students gain from the center will encourage them to work in rural communities, which is ultimately the biggest goal of the center.
“The final outcome down the road is to increase the number of health professionals in rural areas,” she said.
