Cultivating Rural Health Care Professionals is Goal of TWU Project in LaGrange Area

A team of educators from the Texas Woman's University Institute of Health Sciences Houston Center will use distance learning to provide courses for health professionals in the LaGrange, Texas area. The $409,000 grant from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, titled "Interdisciplinary Health Care Education Using Distance Technology in Rural Texas," was awarded from the state's tobacco settlement fund, which is administered by the coordinating board.

TWU faculty from physical therapy, occupational therapy, health care administration, nursing, and nutrition and food sciences will work in collaboration with personnel at Fayette Memorial Hospital in LaGrange to recruit and train health professionals from that area.

TWU faculty members involved in the grant are Dr. Ann Walker, professor of physical therapy, and Dr. Diana Garza, associate professor of health care administration, who both will coordinate a team of TWU educators from nutrition, nursing and occupational therapy. They, in turn, will offer interdisciplinary courses online and through teleconferencing. Fayette Memorial Hospital administrators who will work with the TWU team include CEO Kelley Oliphint and Jennifer Hofmann, director and project liaison.

"Through this grant, we will develop and maintain a long-term partnership between academic programs at TWU and rural professionals, and we will establish practicum sites for interdisciplinary teams of students who are interested in rural health," says Dr. Walker. "Another goal we have identified is to collaborate with rural health professionals and to identify ways in which we can increase the number of health care students from rural counties who are enrolled in graduate programs."

Other goals include:

* Providing online and on-site interdisciplinary training in team dynamics and group process so that students and health care professionals can practice an interdisciplinary health care delivery model for individuals who are living in medically underserved areas;

* Enabling teams of interdisciplinary health care students to describe rural, social, cultural and residential population characteristics that have an impact on health care needs and delivery; and to relate policy and financial issues to health care services; and to identify health challenges of rural communities; and

* Designing collaborative interdisciplinary research that is focused on health care issues.

Additional TWU faculty members who were part of the original TWU team include Dr. Doris Wright and Dr. Rose Bush from the department of nutrition and food sciences; Dr. Rebecca Krepper and Cheryl Juneau from the College of Nursing; Dr. Jaclyn Low and Harriett Davidson from the School of Occupational Therapy; and Dr. Julie Sakowski from the department of health care administration.

- ANN HATCH

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©2006 Texas Medical Center

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