ISU receives grant to expand rural health access

Idaho State University has been awarded a large grant to help expand health education and health services in southeastern Idaho.

The grant is for $386,250 and it will allow ISU to establish an area health education center.

The AHEC will be housed in ISU’s Institute of Rural Health. The biggest goal of the AHEC grant is to improve access to health care in underserved, rural communities in southeastern Idaho.

Dr. Elizabeth Fore, interim director for the IRH, said ISU can help do that by involving and training it health students in rural communities. Also by helping them to establish connections and a reason to stay in those areas.

“Usually people from rural environments tend to go back,” Fore said. “Our hope too, is that by having students who maybe are not from rural communities – having them work in rural communities, learning about other ways to live, they’re going to be more likely to go back to those rural communities, or similar ones.”

“If we can get them used to working in rural communities, they are going to be more likely to work in those communities after they graduate,” Fore continued.

Fore said hopefully this will help lessen the void in rural communities.

“We have such a scarcity of health professionals in our rural and frontier counties that this is a way to build that workforce,” Fore added.

Other goals of the AHEC grant are to not only have students working out in communities, but working disciplinary as well. Meaning, for example, that nursing students will not only work with other nursing students but with other areas as well, such as pharmacy tech students. The goal is to have one area of health work with most other areas as a team.

Fore said another thing the grant will help do is for ISU to establish a pipeline to high school students. This can hopefully help grow interest in those students pursuing health-related careers, thus also growing the future workforce.

Fore said this is a great thing for students because they get community interaction in their profession, they get hands-on education both on and off campus.

“I think it’s a really important part of our mission,” Fore said. “Because part of our mission at ISU is, education definitely, but we’re also interested in helping the community and I see this as going beyond educating students.”

Fore says funds from the grant will be used to hire a center director, develop curriculum, coordinate continuing education activities and establish field sites for student rotations. The director will also oversee implementation of an AHEC Scholars Program, which will provide advanced health professions training for up to 15 ISU students a year.

The AHEC grant is for five years and will run until Aug. 2022.

Fore said the Health Sciences Division at ISU is one of the largest overall. Last year, there were more than 3,000 students in the Health Sciences Division, making up roughly 23 percent of the university’s total enrollment.