AHEC outreach grant renewed for five more years

UNMC’s Area Health Education Center grant has been renewed for another five years, UNMC Department of Family Medicine Chair Jeffrey Harrison, MD, announced recently.

UNMC has held the federal grant since 2001. It funds collaboration between academic institutions and communities to recruit and train health care professionals to serve in rural and underserved areas.

“AHEC’s goals are the recruitment of students into health careers from across the state, with a focus on rural and underserved communities,” Dr. Harrison said. “It also supports continuing education for our providers and support staff out in those communities. It supports students who are in the health care pipeline and facilitates clinical training experiences in those communities.”

The AHEC renewal comes off an impressive five-year grant cycle for the program.

Over the past five years, the Nebraska AHEC Program:

• Held 71 continuing education offerings with more than 5,900 attendees;
• Conducted/hosted 904 pipeline programs for students interested in health care, pre-health programs and/or health profession programs across the state (58% of these attendees were from a rural background);
• Successfully graduated 74 scholars from the Nebraska AHEC Scholars Program, a two-year program that is part of a national initiative to prepare health profession students who want to serve in rural or underserved areas. Graduates are from a variety of academic institutions. Those from UNMC graduated from medicine, nursing, pharmacy, physical therapy, physician assistant and radiologic technology;
• Helped support the KHOP, UHOP, and RHOP pathway programs in various capacities. Currently, 15 AHEC Scholars are past HOP students, further bolstering the pipeline for rural and underserved Nebraska; and
• Supported 992 clinical training field placements.

“We are looking at how can we become more ingrained within the long-term pipeline within rural and underserved Nebraska, starting with high school students,” said Lydia Sand, deputy director and program manager of the AHEC program. “But we also are asking, ‘What’s needed in the state for health care providers? Can we fill that gap through continuing education?’ We continue to explore the health care education gaps and determine not only how AHEC can best address those but also what truly is needed for the workforce for Nebraska.”

Sand pointed to the importance of the five regional AHEC centers (Central Nebraska AHEC, Nebraska Panhandle AHEC, Northern Nebraska AHEC, Omaha AHEC, Southeast Nebraska AHEC), which directly engage with communities, partners and students to help serve all 93 counties in Nebraska.

The program is watching the expansion of the UNMC-University of Nebraska at Kearney collaboration with keen interest, Dr. Harrison said.

“As programming expands, the need for a larger training footprint out across the state is going to be crucial, and AHEC and its five regional centers are well-positioned, with established relationships to help us grow our regional campuses into those communities.”

AHEC is only one piece of the puzzle to addressing the health care workforce needs of Nebraska, Sand said.

“The work of our five regional AHEC centers is crucial in being able to recruit and retain health care providers in rural and underserved areas.”

Dr. Harrison agreed and said he looks forward to the next five years of the program.

“It’s exciting that we will continue to build off the positive work that we’ve been doing.”