Heather Scott is originally from Minnesota, where her relatives still have a dairy and live in small towns. She moved to Kansas in elementary school and spent the rest of her childhood in Winfield, population 11,777.

As Scott puts it, “I’ve always been rural.”

She plans to stay that way, too, using her newly minted doctorate degree in clinical laboratory science to provide health care in west central Kansas, where medical laboratories and hospitals are at risk of closing without enough qualified technicians to staff them.

Scott got a significant boost toward achieving that goal thanks to a new scholarship program in the University of Kansas School of Health Professions.

The Underserved Communities Have a Medical Provider — or U-CHaMP — program recruits health professions students from economically and educationally underserved backgrounds. KU is beginning the second academic year of its participation in the national program, funded by a $3.25 million, five-year grant from the federal Health Resources & Service Administration.

U-CHaMP’s goal is for participating students to become health care providers in underserved areas.

“Through our programming and events, we want students to see how much they’re needed in rural and underserved areas and how much of an impact they can have,” said Angie Huber, U-CHaMP’s program manager.

“It’s inspiring to work with students who are motivated to make a difference. They make me feel hopeful about where health care in Kansas is headed.”

Seeing the light bulbs go on

High school, community college and undergraduate students who aren’t yet enrolled at the medical center can become U-CHaMP ambassadors, participating in activities that reveal the breadth of careers available through the KU School of Health Professions.

For the approximately 70 active ambassadors, Huber said, it’s exciting to watch them discover career opportunities they’ve never heard about before.

When we’re out in the community talking to students, everyone knows nursing, medicine, pharmacy, dental,” she said. “But it’s all those other fields in between that the students really don’t understand. They’re interested in health care, but they don’t really know what they want to do.”

Students who are enrolled in the School of Health Professions can become U-CHaMP scholars. These students receive scholarship money, mentor ambassadors and participate in enrichment events that highlight the need for health care in rural and underserved areas. With the scholars, Huber enjoys “seeing the light bulbs go on” when students’ eyes are opened to the need for their chosen professions in underserved areas.

“Some students have never left the Kansas City metro area,” she said. “Some of the students have no idea that in rural Kansas you may have to drive an hour to see a specialist. Or you need physical therapy and it’s not right there in your town — it might be over an hour away.”

Filling a health care void

Many health professions face workforce shortages in Kansas and across the nation. Some have vacancy rates as high as 20%, said Dave Burnett, Ph.D., RRT, associate dean of community engagement and workforce initiatives for the School of Health Professions and principal investigator for the Health Resources and Services Administration grant.

U-CHaMP’s goal is to improve the lives of all Kansans by strengthening the health care workforce pipeline to medically underserved areas.

“We do that by providing academic, social and financial support to students from disadvantaged backgrounds and those in underserved communities,” Burnett said.

Burnett himself is not a stranger to those communities.

In his teen years, he was raised by a single mother in a “very underserved” community in rural Iowa. He recalls once dislocating his shoulder, and it was a challenge to find proper imaging services or anyone to set it. There wasn’t exactly an emergency department across the street, with a physician standing by.

He added that, as an active kid growing up on a farm, the shoulder incident wasn’t the only scrape he got himself into.

“I didn’t think a whole lot about it then, but when I look back on it, access to many different health care specialties was certainly lacking,” Burnett said. “It’s nice to give back to the communities and try to make sure that isn’t the case.”

Inaugural rural residency program

As part of the scholars program, the School of Health Professions is developing what will be its first-ever rural residency program, slated to begin in U-CHaMP’s third year, Burnett said.

KU is partnering with the Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas, which has locations in more than a dozen small towns. Burnett said the School of Health Professions inquired about the center’s greatest need and learned it could use support in the area of chronic respiratory disease management, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD.

A KU respiratory therapy student will help the center by assisting in diagnosing patients’ disease severity levels and helping implement a chronic disease management program, Burnett said. The center will help the student by providing an opportunity for hands-on experience.

“It becomes a true partnership because they’re working to help us train our students within that particular field, and we’re helping them train their staff on being able to deliver and implement chronic disease management programming,” Burnett said. “That is a win-win.”

Spreading the word

To participate in U-CHaMP, students must come from an economically or educationally underserved background and meet one of three criteria: Be a first-generation college student, attend a high school with a high number of free and reduced lunch-eligible students or meet certain federal income guidelines.

U-CHaMP scholar Graham Blackwood is working on his bachelor’s degree in clinical laboratory science at the School of Health Professions.

Blackwood said the financial assistance he received from U-CHaMP was significant. The scholarship covered his educational expenses during the past school year, allowing him to pursue a work-study program instead of an outside-of-school job. He said he’s interested in working in a rural area where, instead of specializing, he could do a variety of work and have more interaction with patients.

Blackwood grew up in Kansas City not far from the medical center. He heard about clinical laboratory science from a School of Health Professions representative visiting his microbiology class at KU’s Lawrence campus.

Now in his role as a U-CHaMP scholar, he’s had opportunities to “make others aware that clinical laboratory science exists.”

“No one sees us. We’re always in the back of the hospital behind closed doors,” Blackwood said. “I very much enjoy talking about what I do to college students and high schoolers.”

‘Rural health is where my heart is’

Scott lives in Hutchinson and graduated in May. She, too, likes spreading the word about U-CHaMP and her chosen profession in clinical laboratory science. She has been working as the transfusion services supervisor at Hutchinson Regional Medical Center, with a goal of establishing a position as a clinical liaison and clinical decision specialist there. She also hopes to help recruit more rural health professionals and assist other rural labs with solutions to help them remain open.

With an undergraduate degree in biology from Emporia State University and a medical laboratory science degree from Wichita State University, Scott is the first in her family to earn a college degree. She worked in health care for years before enrolling in the KU School of Health Professions to pursue her doctorate.

Scott initially assumed there would be no scholarships available for graduate school.

When she heard about the U-CHaMP program, she thought, “That sounds right up my alley. Underserved populations and rural health? That’s me all the way.”

Scott is married with five children. While pursuing the degree program full-time online, she also worked full-time at the hospital. She said the scholarship provided significant assistance in pursuing her dream.

“My goal with my profession is to keep more hospitals and more laboratories in rural Kansas open,” Scott said. “Rural health is where my heart is. We need more professionals.”