Kenan Primary Care Medical Scholars Program: Preparing Physicians for Service in Rural North Carolina

Adequate staffing of primary care physicians in rural communities is a national dilemma—one that we are also confronting in North Carolina—and this shortage is a serious barrier to health care. While North Carolina has slowly increased its overall supply of physicians, these increases are not seen in underserved rural counties. North Carolina retains about 40% of medical students educated in the state, but only 2% go into primary care in North Carolina's underserved rural counties [1]. Rural track models in medical education programs have shown an increase in the supply of primary care physicians in rural practice [2, 3]. National and state data support the use of a similar type of rural medical education program in North Carolina. In 2013, the William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust—along with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine (UNC SOM) and the Mountain Area Health Education Center (MAHEC) in Asheville—collaborated to create the Kenan Primary Care Medical Scholars Program. The Kenan program seeks to increase the number of UNC SOM students seeking rural health careers in North Carolina, while providing enrichment experiences and financial support to sustain their decision to choose a rural primary care specialty. Students are identified during their 1st year of medical school and are encouraged to apply to the program, which includes the opportunity to participate in a 6-week summer internship in rural Western North Carolina. Selected rural scholars are located at various clinical sites and matched with a rural physician who specializes in a…