East Carolina University’s Brody School of Medicine and ECU Health launched a new Rural Family Medicine Residency Program in 2021 that equips physicians with specialized training in caring for patients in rural and underserved communities.
The program is designed to give recent medical school graduates interested in serving as family medicine physicians in rural communities first-hand experience in caring for patients in the kind of under-resourced settings they plan to practice in upon completion of their residency training.
The residents spend a majority of their first year of training at ECU Health Medical Center in Greenville. They then spend the next two years training in either the rural Hertford County community of Ahoskie — at the Roanoke Chowan Community Health Center and ECU Health Roanoke-Chowan Hospital — or in Duplin County at Goshen Medical Center in Beulaville and ECU Health Duplin Hospital in Kenansville.
The program exposes the residents to the breadth of family medicine — in both resource-abundant academic medical center environments and resource-scarce rural environments — so they are well-prepared to provide comprehensive care in a variety of practice settings.
While in the rural communities, the residents build connections with their patients and become integrated into the communities they serve.
Read more about the Rural Family Medicine Residency Program and their unique approach to training physicians here.