OU looking for community partners to recruit med students from underserved communities

Oct. 24—The University of Oklahoma is looking for community partners to recruit medical students from underserved areas in Oklahoma, including Native American communities.

Stephen Crawford, principal investigator of a $16 million grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Services, said it is important for the university to attract students from underrepresented communities, especially rural communities, because they better understand the different challenges that affect people where they come from.

"It's critical that we're able to reach out to all tribal entities throughout our state," Crawford said.

The initiative is called "The Tribal, Rural and Medically Underserved Communities in Oklahoma Pathways Program."

Currently, the OU College of Medicine has agreed to work with the Chickasaw Nation at its Oklahoma Medical Center in Oklahoma City. It is also working with the Muscogee Nation at the OU-TU School of Community Medicine in Tulsa.

Crawford said he'd like to create relationships with the remaining 37 tribal nations in the state to streamline students into the OU system.

"Many of the smaller tribal nations may not have as many resources as some of the larger tribes," Crawford said. "We know by research that many times people who are from that community, if they do become a physician, offer invaluable care."

"We know that people, even those trying to provide their best, may come in with unknown biases and blinders; whereas, the people who come from those communities, for whatever reason, are able to provide health care that improves outcomes for those particular citizens."

OU brought Crawford out of retirement to administer the program.

He said the university visits high schools, and even junior highs to attract students.

The medical school is even looking for students who have completed their major in a non-pre-medical bachelor's degree.

"One of the things we're going to do in the grant is have what's called a post baccalaureate program, meaning that they've gone through college, and now they're in a career, but they may be rethinking what they are doing," he said. "They may think, 'Maybe I should go into medicine,' but they need to take some other training to qualify for medical school."

OU will provide resources for online training to help former students with bachelor's degrees to get necessary credits for medical school.

The grant will also provide some level of training to take entrance exams.

"And that's not inexpensive," he said. "Once they get to medical school, we help them learn the basics of primary care and why that's important.

He said the program will encourage students to study primary care medicine and get a residency in a rural part of Oklahoma.

"Hopefully back to those same communities they came from, so they can help improve the health care access there," he said.

Gary Raskcob, OU Health Sciences senior vice president and provost, said the grant is important to improve health outcomes throughout the state.

"This award will enable OU Health Sciences to greatly expand our recruitment of medical students from Tribal and rural Oklahoma for the benefit of Oklahomans and will be a significant step in our efforts to reduce health disparities across the state," he said.

Mary Gowin, associate professor in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, OU College of Medicine, and co-investigator for the project, said the grant will fill a need within Oklahoma.

"We rank 47th in the nation in terms of primary care access, and we have two counties in the whole state that are not classified as primary care health profession shortage areas, so really, this is so vital," Gowin said. "Approximately 41% of our Oklahoma population lives in rural cities and towns. We also have the largest number of federally recognized tribes at 38, and Tribal land makes up about 43% of the state's landmass. Having primary care in these areas is vital to the health and economic well-being of our state."

Brian King covers education and politics for The Transcript. Reach him at bking@normantranscript.com.