| AHEC - Area Health Education Center
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What the heck is an AHEC?
The Montana AHEC (Area Health Education Centers) mission is to improve the supply and distribution of healthcare professionals, with an emphasis on primary care, through community/academic educational partnerships, in order to increase the access to quality healthcare. We work to connect students to healthcare careers, professionals to communities, and communities to better health.
To fulfill our mission, we focus on three key areas:
1) Recruitment and Retention of qualified healthcare professionals
2) Pipeline programs for K-12 students to generate interest in healthcare professions
3) Continuing Education programs for practicing healthcare professionals
History of AHEC
The AHEC program was developed by Congress in 1971 to recruit, train and retain a health professions workforce committed to underserved populations. Grants to fund AHECs were always made to the medical school(s) within the states. The only exception to this has been the University of Washington School of Medicine (UWSM). In this case, the federal government provided funding to the UWSM to start AHECs in Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho?all partners in the Regional WWAMI program.
On October 1, 1985, the Montana AHEC was implemented. The program office for the Montana Area Health Education Center/Office of Rural Health is located on the campus of Montana State University in Bozeman.
In September 2007, under new rules allowing Colleges of Nursing to apply for AHEC grants, the MSU College of Nursing applied and was awarded a grant to establish four regional AHEC offices in Montana in addition to the Bozeman Program Office. In year one, the South Central Regional office was set up in Dillon under the auspices of the Montana Hospital Association and the Eastern Regional AHEC office was set up in Billings at RiverStone Health. The Western office was established in September of 2008 under the College of Health Professions at The University of Montana. The North Central regional office will be established in the fall of 2009.
Each region has a director/program manager, a regional advisory council, and will work to develop healthcare workforce strategies for their region.
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