Transcript: Jane Shelby

Native students benefit from access to a collaborative medical school among universities in 5 northwestern states

[Shelby:]: WWAMI stands for Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho, and it's a decentralized medical education program providing the opportunity for students in these northwestern states to attend a public medical school which, of course, is the University of Washington in Seattle. These states have lower populations, and so for anywhere from 30 to 40 years these states have partnered with the University of Washington to enable the students to go to medical school and also to help provide for the physician workforce needs of the states. The president of the American Association of Indian Physicians this year Donna Galbreath is Athabascan. She came through our WWAMI program, and we're very proud to have her as a WWAMI alumni, but we need more students. This is part of reaching out and doing a better job of bringing up rising students from rural and under-served communities because it's not only the right thing to do but they also are more likely to practice near their home communities
[Lindberg:]: Absolutely. Sure.