UA’s Rural Medical Scholars Program Adds Agricultural Safety and Health Components

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The Rural Medical Scholars Program at The University of Alabama is now working with The University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Deep South Center for Occupational Safety and Health to add an agricultural safety and health component to the master’s degree curriculum of the program.

The training program, with an emphasis on agricultural safety and health, combines the expertise and resources of the Deep South Center with the Rural Medical Scholars Program and integrates UA’s existing agromedicine program with other Deep South Center core programs. Agromedicine uses the expertise of medical sciences and the agricultural sciences through cooperative extension in an interdisciplinary approach to agricultural health and safety. The Rural Medical Scholars Program produces primary care physicians for rural Alabama.

Funding from the National Institute of Occupational Safety & Health, a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will be used to develop the new training program. The institute grant to the Deep South Center provides $394,000 over four years to the RMSP to add the agricultural health and safety courses to the RMSP’s rural medical education curriculum. Dr. Kent Oestenstad, director of the Deep South Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Auburn University, serves as principal investigator.

“We are very pleased to welcome this new program to our center,” Oestenstad says. “It will help prepare health and safety professionals to meet the needs of a vital but underserved population in our economy.”

The program will be under the direction of Dr. John Wheat and Dr. Jim Leeper, professors of community and rural medicine at The University of Alabama. Wheat, who is also director of the RMSP and other Rural Scholars programs that constitute the Rural Health Leaders Pipeline at UA and the UA School of Medicine, said funding for the addition of agricultural safety and health courses to the RMSP curriculum represents “a major advancement in our efforts to prepare health professionals to address health concerns characteristic of rural Alabamians.”

A strong emphasis on occupational safety, ergonomics and industrial hygiene will be provided through the additions to the one-year master’s study. The program, which provides tuition and stipends for a number of those admitted, is open to Rural Medical Scholars and other students interested in rural health-related careers

Applicants will be recruited from the ranks of the Rural Health Scholars and Minority Rural Health Pipeline programs that identify students at high school and college levels who have interest in rural health careers. Announcements will also be made through the Cooperative Extension system, Academy of Family Physicians and pre-health professional clubs at colleges throughout the state. Trainees are selected based on their potential to complete the rural medical educational pipeline, including the master’s degree, medical degree and residency.

Individuals who already have an M.D. or another health professional degree (medicine, nursing, dentistry, pharmacology, veterinary medicine, health education, public health or social work) may also be admitted. Non-health professional students with well-articulated plans for rural community and agricultural health practice, such as in Cooperative Extension, are also eligible for admission.

“Since agromedicine has been a focus of the RMSP curriculum since it began in 1996, the expansion of course offerings will strengthen that component of the RMSP curriculum and provide interaction with health professional students in other disciplines who seek to incorporate agricultural health and safety into their training,” Leeper said.

The Tuscaloosa campus of The University of Alabama School of Medicine is a part of the College of Community Health Sciences. CCHS also operates a comprehensive, state-of-the-art medical clinic, University Medical Center, where College faculty members conduct their medical practices and where students and residents receive clinical experience and training. The College’s research component supports faculty and student research efforts, including clinical trials.