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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Kaia Gallagher, PhD¹, Paul Nutting, MD¹, Nancy B. Csuti, Dr PH², and Laurel Petralia². (1) Center for Research Strategies, 225 East 16th Avenue, Suite 1150, Denver, CO 80203, 303-860-1705, kaia.gallagher@crsllc.org, (2) The Colorado Trust, 1600 Sherman St., Denver, CO 80203

A traditional strategy for encouraging health care professionals to work in a rural setting has been to “expose” students to rural practice settings as part of their training. Programs vary in: 1) the duration of these exposure experiences 2) the extent to which these experiences explicitly focus on encouraging students to consider rural settings as a practice choice and 3) the role of community partners in facilitating and enriching this experience. This presentation will report on the experience in Colorado across three programs: 1) a four-year medical school program recruiting students for a “rural track” 2) a family practice residency program that provides residents with a month long rural emersion experience and 3) a pharmacy training program that embeds a community-partnership experience as part of their four year professional training. These programs are part of a a three-year, $10 million initiative funded by The Colorado Trust to increase the number of health care providers across multiple health professions categories. The session will compare and contrast these approaches in terms of student responses, program experiences and longer term results in promoting rural practice choices.

Learning Objectives:

• 1. To synthesize the array of program characteristics that are currently used to expose health professions students to rural practice experiences
• 2. To disseminate best practices regarding health professions training program strategies for promoting rural practice experiences
• 3. To analyze the relative effectiveness of training programs in encouraging students to select rural practice settings at the end of their training

Keywords: Professional Training, Rural Health Service Providers

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Not Answered

Handout (.ppt format, 838.0 kb)