Mississippi is full of small towns that few people care about, aside, of course, from the people who live in those towns.
That is the premise behind a state program that hopes to alleviate the healthcare problems that affect small towns, many of whom don’t have doctors.
Dr. Wahnee Sherman, who grew up in a small town herself (Lena, Mississippi, pop. 150), is the executive director of Mississippi Rural Physicians Scholarship Program (MRPSP). She visited Columbus on Tuesday to inform Rotary Club members at Lion Hills Center & Golf Club about the program, which was created by the Mississippi legislature in 2007 and is just beginning to place doctors in some of those rural areas where doctors are most scarce.
The lack of doctors in rural Mississippi is not a recent phenomenon. As far back as 2003, a study by the American Association of Medical Colleges found that 56 percent of all doctors practice in the state’s four largest counties. Two of three counties in Mississippi are officially designated health professional shortage areas with high levels of chronic illnesses and poverty.
And even in small towns that have doctors, many are nearing retirement age.
To address the problem, the legislative funded a annual $1.5 million scholarship program geared toward identifying doctors who could be persuaded to practice in rural areas, which are defined by the program as towns with a population of less than 20,000 or towns that are at least 20 miles from a hospital.
Since its inception seven years ago, the MRPSP has visited every nook and cranny of the state, visiting every community-college and four-year college in the state to identify prospective students with roots in Mississippi’s small towns.
“You’re probably familiar with Teach for America,” Sherman told the Rotarians. “What you often have with that organization is someone from Chicago going into a small town in Mississippi and teaching for a couple of years, then going back to Chicago or wherever they are from. I’m not knocking Teach for America; it’s a great program. But our approach is different. We feel if we can find help educated doctors who are from some of those small towns, they will be far more likely not to just stay there until they’ve fulfilled their commitment, but stay and be a part of the community and build their careers in those towns.”
The MRPSP program provides $30,000 annually for medical school students. After completing residency requirements, the participants agree to work in a rural clinic for as many years as they received scholarship money.
The scholarship program actually begins in the student’s second year of college, although there is no money made available to the students during their undergraduate studies. During that time, the MRPSP provides mentoring. Upon completion of medical school, the future doctors agree to train in one of five primary care areas — family medicine, general internal medicine, internal medicine-pediatrics, OB/GYN or pediatrics.
Last year, the MRPSP added a scholarship program for dentists, using most of the same criteria.
To date, the MRPSP has provided 93 scholarships to medical school and there are currently 53 scholarship recipients in medical school. Four doctors have completed their residency and are practicing in small Mississippi towns, including Louisville, Cleveland, Crystal Springs and Sandersville.
“What we hope to do is inform you about what this program is doing and how important it is to rural Mississippi,” Sherman said. “We urge you, if you know of students, even high school students, who might be interested in having most of their medical school costs paid for to get in touch. We also urge you to tell your legislators and representatives to keep supporting this program.”
For more information, visit www.umc.edu/mrpsp.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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