WVU in the News: Preventive medicine for rural America: why more training programs must be here
While there is a well-recognized national shortage of Preventive Medicine (PM) physicians, there is also a marked maldistribution. In a new article in the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, Drs. Jennifer Lultschik and Christopher Martin describe one approach to address the disparity in PM specialists in practice within rural regions such as Appalachia by supporting a greater number of Graduate Medical Education (GME) programs based within these regions.
Currently, of the 64 accredited civilian PM residency programs, only four are located in rural areas. The only PM residency programs based in the entire Appalachian region are based at West Virginia University.
In the following video, Lultschik and Martin describe the challenges to the establishing and sustaining rural-based Preventive Medicine GME programs as well as opportunities for promoting and supporting GME programs based in rural areas of need.