Delivering Doctors to small towns and rural areas

The eight students at the University of Kansas medical school in Salina on Friday.

This state, so sparsely populated in parts that five counties have no doctors at all, has struggled for years to encourage young doctors to relocate to rural communities, where health problems are often exacerbated by a lack of even the most basic care.

On Friday, a new medical school campus opened here to provide a novel solution to the persistent problem: an inaugural class of eight aspiring doctors who will receive all their training in exactly the kind of small community where officials hope they will remain to practice medicine.

The new school, operated by the University of Kansas, is billed as the smallest in the nation to offer a full four-year medical education. More important, supporters say, the students will remain personally and professionally rooted in the agricultural center of the state — a three-hour drive from the university’s state-of-the-art medical and research facilities in Kansas City.

And they quote Alan Morgan, the president of the National Rural Health Association:

It just makes sense, and it’s great that it’s been put into practice. From a rural policy perspective, this is big news.

Read the whole story here.