The\u00a0UC Davis School of Medicine\u00a0will expand its successful three-year medical school pathway into Northern California rural counties to more quickly fill workplace shortages of doctors who specialize in primary care and psychiatry.<\/p>\n
Extending the program\u2019s reach will allow medical students to train in hospitals and clinics in Shasta, Nevada and Humboldt counties. Medical school and community health care leaders hope the students, after graduation, will also spend their residency years in the rural counties and eventually practice medicine there.<\/p>\n
The initiative, which begins next school year, is centered on a robust partnership between 11 organizations and the school\u2019s\u00a0ACE-PC\u00a0pathway.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe UC Davis School of Medicine is excited to unite with well-established health care organizations that share our mission of providing high-quality care to rural communities and medically underserved populations,\u201d said\u00a0Alicia Gonzalez-Flores, executive director of ACE-PC and an associate professor of health sciences.<\/p>\n
The new pathway will be known as Rural ACE-PCP, or Rural Accelerated Competency-based Education in Primary Care and Psychiatry.<\/p>\n
\u201cRural ACE-PCP,\u201d Gonzalez-Flores added, \u201cwill enhance medical education by expanding clinical training sites, and will also strengthen community partnerships, encourage high school and college students to attend medical school and, eventually, increase access to psychiatry and primary care.\u201d<\/p>\n
Program created through collaborative effort<\/p>\n
The partner organizations in Shasta County are:<\/p>\n
Shasta Community Health Center.
\nHill Country Community Clinic.
\nShasta County Public Health.
\nDignity Health Mercy Redding Family Practice Residency Program.<\/p>\n
The partner organizations in Nevada County are:<\/p>\n
Northern Rural Training and Employment Consortium.
\nChapa-De Indian Health.
\nWestern Sierra Medical Clinic.
\nDignity Health Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital.
\nNevada County Health and Human Services Agency.
\nNevada County Public Health.
\nNevada County Behavioral Health.<\/p>\n
Training sites in Humboldt County will be added in the near future.<\/p>\n
Partnership leaders view Rural ACE-PCP as an opportunity to identify and train local, homegrown students who want to practice medicine in the community where they were raised.<\/p>\n
\u201cTraining physicians in rural and medically underserved communities, especially when they have local ties, is key to advancing physician shortages,\u201d said\u00a0Glenn Gookin, a Nevada County family medicine physician who will help oversee training sites for Rural ACE-PCP. Gookin is program director of Sierra Nevada Family Medicine Residency, which is based at Chapa-De Indian Health and Dignity Health\u2019s Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital in Grass Valley.<\/p>\n
Rooted in longstanding partnerships<\/p>\n
The effort in Nevada County builds on existing relationships between clinical sites and the\u00a0Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing at UC Davis. The school\u2019s students in physician assistant, family nurse practitioner and psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner programs experience meaningful training in the regions\u2019 rural communities.<\/p>\n
In Shasta County, Rural ACE-PCP will also rely on existing partnerships that for decades have allowed medical students and residents to care for patients in and around Redding.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe expansion of ACE-PCP into Shasta County is an inspiring and much-needed step toward addressing health care access in rural communities,\u201d said Amanda Mooneyham, a family medicine physician and residency program director at Shasta Community Health Center in Redding.<\/p>\n
Mooneyham, a UC Davis medical school graduate who trained in Redding, added:<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s heartening to see such a strong commitment to training future physicians in areas where they\u2019re most needed \u2014 and in a way that values continuity, community connection and primary care.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rural ACE-PCP complements other UC Davis mission-oriented pathways including\u00a0Rural PRIME, which trains students during their four years of medical education to care for patients in rural areas.<\/p>\n
What is ACE-PC?<\/p>\n
ACE-PC is a fast-paced and intensive pathway that puts students committed to primary care \u2014 family medicine or internal medicine \u2014 through medical school in just three years instead of four. Launched in 2014, it is the only program of its kind on the West Coast. The pathway was developed in response to the urgent need for primary care providers in Northern and Central California, especially in communities where residents are medically underserved.<\/p>\n
After completing medical school in three years, ACE-PC graduates spend another three years in residency. And now, with Rural ACE-PCP, some graduates will have the opportunity to enter a psychiatry residency to help fill the critical specialty\u2019s gap in rural areas.<\/p>\n
Rural ACE-PCP hopes to educate 14 students over the next three years and place them in six different training sites for their clinical rotations. At some point in the second half of the three years, students will also be able to practice their skills in Humboldt County, where the School of Nursing already trains roughly 10 students a year in family practice and hospital settings.<\/p>\n
A $750,000 grant from the\u00a0California Medicine Scholars Program\u00a0funds the initiative. The state-sponsored organization seeks to advance health equity by addressing the growing shortages in the primary care workforce.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe appreciate the funding from CMSP, which is well aware of the challenges faced by residents of rural areas in seeking primary care and psychiatry services,\u201d said\u00a0Mark Servis, vice dean of medical education for the School of Medicine and a practicing psychiatrist. \u201cWe are also grateful to our community partners for their willingness to share medical expertise and model high-quality care with our students \u2014 their dedication will go a long way in preparing the next generation of rural physicians.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The\u00a0UC Davis School of Medicine\u00a0will expand its successful three-year medical school pathway into Northern California rural counties to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[179,181,23,100,180,121,123,122],"class_list":{"0":"post-39389","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sacramento","8":"tag-community","9":"tag-latest-headlines","10":"tag-local-news","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newsletter","13":"tag-sacramento","14":"tag-sacramento-headlines","15":"tag-sacramento-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}