A three-year, $3 million federal grant announced today (Oct. 27) will allow West Virginia’s medical schools to continue to provide rural communities with health care professionals through four Area Health Education Centers (AHEC).

Commissioner Joan Ohl of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced the award at West Virginia Rural Health Conference at Stonewall Resort. She presented a $1.03 million check to West Virginia University at the event.

””Through the leadership of WVU and the AHEC program West Virginia communities will be empowered to strengthen practice in rural and underserved sections of our state,”Ohl said.”This kind of caring and cooperation strengthens families and individuals and in that way strengthens our state and our country.”

Although WVU is the lead agency in the grant, the project is a collaborative among the state’s medical schools.

WVU guides two AHEC regions serving northern and eastern West Virginia. The Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine at Marshall University supports the Southwestern AHEC , and the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine supports the Southeastern AHEC .

“The mission of the AHEC program is to work with rural communities and health professions schools to recruit and retain care providers,”said Hilda Heady, state program director.”AHEC builds on the very successful Rural Health Education Partnership training network. To date more than 500 health professionals are now in practice in rural underserved communities in the state who completed rural rotations in RHEP . Together RHEP and AHEC maintain 332 training sites where roughly 110 students and residents train each month.

“We are so very fortunate in WV to have such a robust system in place to train our healthcare providers,”she said. Sandra Y. Pope, AHEC associate program director, said,”We appreciate this chance to continue our work and further the mission of our community partnerships.”

The state AHEC program office is based at the WVU School of Medicine Charleston Division. One of the four regional AHECs is based in the School’s newest regional campus, the Eastern Division, in Martinsburg.”This funding furthers our role in supporting rural medicine, and rural health training throughout the state. We are pleased to continue our leadership role in this effort,”said Robert D’Alessandri, M.D., vice president for health sciences at WVU .

The program brings real services to rural communities, Heady added.”Last spring, a team of health profession students and a medical residents completed home visits in Greenbrier County and surrounding area, to screen rural people for osteoporosis. This service is made possible through a grant to the state to train future health care providers in better ways to meet the needs of rural people.”