Area Health Education Center

The Area Health Education Center (AHEC) at Boonshoft School of Medicine seeks to assist in the development and implementation of educational programs through which students of the health professions (e.g., medicine, nursing, and allied health) are exposed to clinical training experiences in underserved urban and rural areas. Health professions students work in multiple community-based clinical settings, including neighborhood health centers, free clinics, and senior services centers providing direct primary care services. Students provide primary care services to more than 10,000 people annually through these centers.

The program also provides continuing medical education conferences for area providers; approximately 1,200 health care providers participate in these programs each year. In addition, the AHEC may, when funds are available, provide seed grants to other organizations within its eight-county West Central Ohio service area to enable them to provide similar health professions education programs both for students and active practitioners.

Major programs sponsored by the AHEC include the WSU Department of Family Medicine's summer preceptorship program through which an average of 30 students per year spend from four to six weeks with a family practice preceptor in a community-based site between the first and second year of medical school. The AHEC also provides significant faculty support for the family medicine rotations for third-year students at the Yellow Springs Family Health Center. Other recent AHEC efforts include support for nursing education and recruitment through the WSU College of Nursing and Health and Sinclair Community College. The AHEC has also played an integral role in the development of programs through the Center for Healthy Communities.

Within the state of Ohio, the other five allopathic and one osteopathic medical school also conduct AHEC programs and activities serving the geographic areas contiguous to their schools. The Ohio AHEC system administers numerous statewide health education programs focused on areas such as women's health. A statewide consortium of all seven schools seeks to develop and implement a variety of statewide efforts.

The Wright State AHEC office is located within the School of Medicine's Office of Academic Affairs. The Program Director is Katherine Cauley, Ph.D., director of the Center for Healthy Communities.