Announcements From The Alabama Rural Health Association
FIRST STUDENT CHAPTER OF ALABAMA STUDENT RURAL HEALTH ASSOCIATION (ARHSA) ESTABLISHED AT UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH ALABAMA
The first student chapter of the Alabama Rural Health Association has been established at the University of South Alabama. This multi-discipline organization of health care students with interests in rural health care will conduct monthly meetings presenting speakers and programs of interest to rural health care. Campus chapters are an excellent way to communicate with members of our future rural health care workforce and get future practitioners actively involved in rural health care policy recommendation and development.
ARHA seeks to identify students at other Alabama colleges and universities who would like to be involved in establishing chapters on their campuses. Student memberships are only $10 per year and students have all rights and privileges that come with any other type of membership. Each student or campus chapter must have a faculty or staff advisor.
For more information on student chapters, contact ARHA at arha@arhaonline.org.
ARHA DIRECTOR, JOHN WHEAT, M.D., INDUCTED INTO ALABAMA HEALTHCARE HALL OF FAME
The Alabama Healthcare Hall of Fame inducted University of Alabama Professor John Wheat, M.D. on May 8, 2010 in Montgomery.
Wheat is a member of the medical faculty in the departments of Community & Rural Medicine and Internal Medicine at the College of Community Health Sciences and the University of Alabama School of Medicine. He grew up in Sumter and Autauga counties.
Wheat was nominated by Dr. Hiram Johnson of Tuscaloosa.
The honoree is widely known across the state and nation for his work to help rural students who want to become rural doctors and primary care physicians.
“No single individual in the modern era has done more to address the shortage of primary care physicians in Alabama than Dr. Wheat,” said Holley Midgley of the Alabama Alabama Family Practice Rural Health Board (and Vice-president of the Alabama Rural Health Association) in a prepared statement on Friday.
Wheat has focused his administrative and research efforts on programming to recruit, train and place primary care physicians in the under-served rural communities in Alabama.
The documented success of these programs brought national recognition to Alabama’s efforts to provide rural doctors. Wheat was named the 2007 Distinguished Educator of the Year by the National Rural Health Association.
“Dr. Wheat is a well-known and respected leader in our state in rural medical education — particularly regarding the need to recruit rural students into medical and health careers and to support them through their professional training,” said Gov. Bob Riley in a statement released Friday. “This ‘pipeline’ to recruit and nurture rural students is a model that is being replicated in our state and one which other states can look to as we all seek to improve quality of health care in under-served communities.”
Wheat’s previous recognition includes the Ira L. Myers Award, the Alabama Family Practice Rural Health Board and appointments by Governor Riley and former Governor Don Siegelman to represent Alabama on national health policy boards.
Wheat also has held leadership positions in the National Rural Health Association’s Rural Medical Educator Interest Group, the North American Agromedicine Consortium and the Stueland Scholar Award from the National Farm Medicine Center in Marshfield, Wisconsin.
(Selma Times-Journal,)
Dr. Wheat is a long-time member and strong supporter of the Alabama Rural Health Association. He currently serves on the ARHA Board of Directors.
ARHA BOARD OF DIRECTORS OVERWHELMINGLY APPROVES "MEDICAL HOME" DIRECT APPROPRIATION PROPOSAL
Your ARHA Board of Directors has overwhelmingly approved seeking $1 million in seed funding through a direct appropriation to take steps in establishing the Rural Alabama Patient Centered Medical Home Center for Education and Research. This proposed center will be jointly operated through participation by medical programs at the University of South Alabama and the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa campus. Current medical students and practicing physicians will be eligible for training at this center in operation of the "medical home" concept of care provision.
Read more about the medical home concept of care provision
Read details about the ARHA application
ARHA DIRECTOR, DR. JEANETTE VANDERMEER, INDUCTED INTO ALABAMA NURSING HALL OF FAME
ARHA Director, Dr. Jeanette VanderMeer was inducted into the Alabama Nursing Hall of Fame in a special ceremony on October 15 at the North River Yacht Club in Tuscaloosa.
Dr. VanderMeer received a diploma from Druid City Hospital School of Nursing, her BSN from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, her MSN from the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in nursing administration, and her DSN from the University of Alabama in Birmingham in community health nursing, with a minor in health policy.
Dr. VanderMeer has been very active in her support of rural nursing. She currently serves as an assistant professor and RN Mobility Coordinator with the Capstone College of Nursing at The University of Alabama. Her research interests are eldercare, family caregivers, and the personal and financial costs of providing health, especially home care.
She is a member of the Alabama State Nurses' Association, Sigma Theta Tau, National League for Nursing, Alabama League for Nursing, and also serves on the Board of the Alabama Gerontological Association.
The Hall of Fame is governed by the Alabama Nursing Hall of Fame Board comprised of members of our Board of Visitors. This body establishes the criteria for selecting inductees and the methods for determining eligibility for and election to the Hall of Fame. Nominations for induction into the Hall of Fame are submitted to a Selection Committee of the Alabama Nursing Hall of Fame Board.
The first class of inductees in the Alabama Nursing Hall of Fame was honored October 25, 2001, in a ceremony at the North River Yacht Club in Tuscaloosa. An induction ceremony is held biannually to honor those who have made significant contributions to nursing. Individually and collectively they have greatly influenced the profession of nursing and health care in the State of Alabama and the nation.
ARHA MEMBER, REGINA BENJAMIN, M.D., SELECTED AS U.S. SURGEON GENERAL
President Obama has announced his choice for surgeon general -- Dr. Regina Benjamin, a 52-year-old family practice doctor who has spent most of her career tending to the needs of poor patients in a Gulf Coast clinic in Alabama.
"When people couldn't pay, she didn't charge them," Obama said. "When the clinic wasn't making money, she didn't take a salary for herself."
He called Benjamin "a relentless promoter" of programs to fight preventable illness. Benjamin cited the toll of preventable illness as the reason her family was not with her at the announcement: Her father died with diabetes and high blood pressure; her older brother and only sibling died at age 44 of an HIV-related illness; her mother died of lung cancer after taking up smoking as a girl; her mother's twin brother could not attend because he is at home "struggling for each breath" after a lifetime of smoking.
"I cannot change my family's past, but I can be a voice to improve our nation's health for the future," she said.
Benjamin received a bachelor's degree in 1979 from Xavier University of Louisiana, attended Morehouse School of Medicine from 1980 to 1982, and received a doctor of medicine degree from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1984. She completed her residency in family practice at the Medical Center of Central Georgia in 1987.
Her medical training was paid for by a federal program, the National Health Service Corps, under which medical students promise to work in areas with few doctors in exchange for free tuition, one year of service for every year of paid tuition.
Benjamin founded the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic in 1990 in the fishing village of Bayou La Batre, Alabama, and has served as its CEO since.
Like many of her patients, the clinic has suffered its own life-threatening challenges. It was heavily damaged by Hurricane Georges in 1998 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. It also burned to the ground several years ago. But Benjamin rebuilt it after each setback and has continued to offer medical care to the village's 2,500 residents.
Her commitment to them has meant making house calls during the rebuilding, mortgaging her house and maxing out her credit cards, Obama said.
"Regina Benjamin has refused to give up; her patients have refused to give up," he said. Many of her family practice patients are immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos who make up a third of Bayou La Batre's population, and many of them are uninsured. Benjamin's expertise goes beyond medicine; she earned a master's in business administration in 1991 from Tulane University. But her focus has not been on making money for herself, she said.
"My priority has always been the needs of my patients," she said. "I decided to treat patients regardless of their ability to pay."
Benjamin said she has worked for years to scrape together the resources needed to keep the clinic doors open and found "it has not been an easy road. ... It should not be this hard for doctors and other health care providers to care for their patients." She praised Obama "for putting health care reform at the top of your domestic agenda," and said she hopes, if confirmed by the Senate, "to be America's doctor, America's family physician."
"As we work toward a solution to this health care crisis, I promise to communicate directly to the American people, to help guide them through whatever changes come with health care reform. I want to make sure that no one falls through the cracks," she said.
A call to the clinic, where Benjamin was working last week, found it in full swing. "We are just packed in with patients right now, and I'm the only one at the front office," said a breathless woman who then hung up.
Benjamin has served as the associate dean for rural health at the University of South Alabama's College of Medicine, representing this institution on the Alabama Rural Health Association's Board of Directors. She also served as president of the State of Alabama Medical Association, from 2002-2003.
She was the first African-American woman board member of the American Medical Association, and she just served a term as chairwoman of the group's Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs.
(CNN)
ARHA Press Releases
November 4, 2003: Support Alabama's Rural Health Care Industry
October
15, 2005: Alabama Rural Health Association to
Recognize Rural Health Champions
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