The Role of Rural Graduate Medical Education in Improving Rural Health and Health Care

-What Should We Teach? -O ne out of five people live in rural America. There is a widening gap for all-cause mortality rates in rural areas that is linked in part to physician shortages. 1 Moreover, rural counties with majority Black or indigenous populations suffer the highest rates of premature death. Family physicians need to be prepared to assume the roles and take the actions that have the greatest impact. Graduate medical education (GME) of family physicians must attain educational quality, but must also go beyond this to become a promoter of the partnerships necessary to find community-based solutions. In doing this we will be returning to our roots of formal community-based education and socially-accountable GME.