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The Hub northwestern exposure
Drs. Jerry Ball and Roger Rosenblatt in Galena, Alaska. Photo courtesy Roger Rosenblatt.
Country Care
School of Medicine’s rural education program
celebrates 40 years of making a difference
By Diane Mapes
WITH A NAME THAT SOUNDS LIKE it packs a wallop, the UW School
of Medicine’s multi-regional medical program, WWAMI, is celebrating
40 years—and some serious accomplishments.
An acronym for the five partner states (Washington, Wyoming,
Alaska, Montana and Idaho), WWAMI allows medical students to
train in their home state for the first year and at the UW during their
second. After that, they spend their next two years doing clerkships
at hundreds of locations within the five-state region.
Since its founding in 1971, WWAMI has worked to provide publicly
supported medical education to the Northwest region; expand
community-based medical education; expand graduate education
and residency training; help address the lack of physicians between
urban and rural areas; and do all of that in a cost-effective manner.
“One of the great things about WWAMI is that students can
tailor their education to what they’re interested in,” says Dr.
Suzanne Allen, Vice Chair for Regional Affairs in the UW School of
Medicine. “They can have an experience in inner-city Seattle. They
can have an international experience. They can have a rural-medicine
experience. There are really a lot of opportunities for them.”
John McDougall, a 42-year-old medical resident, says WWAMI not
only provided a stellar education, it allowed him to study in a dream
environment.
“I’d already decided that rural medicine was my intended course of
study,” he says. “But then my medical school coordinator mentioned
the possibility of studying in Bozeman, Montana. Fly fishing? Skiing?
Plus a world-class anatomy professor? It was too good to be true.”
Jacob Casey, a 29-year-old medical student currently completing his
first year of study at the Spokane campus (other first-year sites for
Washington residents include the UW and WSU in Pullman), says he,
too, feels lucky to be part of the WWAMI program.
“We have a group of 20 students in the first year here in Spokane
versus a first year in Seattle with 180 students,” he says. “You get
more attention, you form closer bonds with your instructors and
with your peers. Plus the community is very excited to have us here.”
—Diane Mapes is a Seattle freelance writer. A longer version of this
story can be found at UWalum.com/Columns
14 UW 150 Years