MESSAGE FROM ASSISTANT DIRECTOR

It has been an exciting past 6 months and I am proud to share the success of our projects. We look forward to the continued growth of our clinical training programs and are excited to see what the next year brings.

Our Community Health Worker project has been particularly successful. We recently received funding for an additional 2 years and have already doubled the number of referrals we are working with. We have also been able to help with 100 student rotations from July to December, a program that offers health profession students the chance to build new, collaborative relationships with healthcare providers in rural communities and to learn about the unique challenges of providing care in rural settings.

Our 3RNet initiative has connected a medical resident with the Central Valley Medical Center in Nephi and he will begin working full-time in August of 2023. 3RNet is an amazing resource that allows facilities to start interacting with mission-minded health professionals actively looking for jobs in rural and underserved areas. 121 new jobs in Utah were added to 3RNet between July and December and those jobs were viewed 135,101 times.

Finally, our UT-PIC project has graduated 5 interns from the 2021-2022 cohort; one who is now working full-time in Richfield and one is working full-time at Utah Tech. We have also increased our number of interns to 7 for the 2022-2023 cohort and added sites in Heber and St. George. I am proud of the progress we have made and am looking forward to what the future holds. Thank you for your continued support!

Our office remains committed to providing meaningful opportunities and collaborations with students, communities, organizations, and facilities. Please reach out to our office if we can help you in any way.

Rural Rotation Success Story

"Hello, my name is Derek, and I am a 4th year pharmacy student at the University of Utah. I had the opportunity of working with the Utah Navajo Health System (UNHS) in the Four Corners area of Utah. While on rotation with UNHS, I was able to work with patients at 3 different clinics in the local areas. While working with UNHS, I was able to help and work with a very unique patient population that included nearly 95% Native American patients most of which were from the Navajo tribe. A majority of the services provided by the clinical pharmacists at UNHS involved diabetes management, but they also were responsible for anticoagulation as well as hypertension management. We met with patients every day to see how we could work together to make their diabetes management more manageable and less burdensome for the patient while improving clinical outcomes. Working in this rural setting with this patient population was an incredible experience that taught me a great deal about myself and what direction I would like to take with my practice moving forward.

In addition to working with an amazing staff and patient population, the area in the Four Corners region of Utah has some of the most incredible scenery in all of the country. I was able to visit places such as Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, Gooseneck State Park, Valley of the Gods, Mexican Hat and many other local archeological ruins and sites. This is an amazing and extremely unique part of the country, and one that I am fortunate to have had the opportunity to see and live in."