A new initiative in 2023 Improving Indigenous Health through Mentorship, Academic EnGagement and INnovation (IIMAGIN), led by the UW School of Medicine and Public Health’s Native American Center for Health Professions (NACHP), promotes Indigenous health through an innovative education pathway that enhances the recruitment of health professions students with a commitment to engaging with Native communities.
IIMAGIN aims to address the healthcare workforce needs of Wisconsin’s tribal communities at critical intervention points along the medical training pathway by creating dedicated pre-college and college pathway programs, establishing a pre-faculty development pathway, and developing new Indigenous health and medical curriculum offerings.
The Challenge
Improving health outcomes in American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) populations and tribal communities is critically important, especially in Wisconsin where communities face dual challenges stemming from COVID-19, continuing and forecasted workforce shortages, and funding challenges.
Project Goals
The UW School of Medicine and Public Health Native American Center for Health Professions (NACHP) was founded in 2012 with the mission to enhance the recruitment, retention and graduation rates of health professions students engaged with Native communities and to promote health education, research and community-academic partnerships with Native communities. IIMAGIN builds on work NACHP is already engaged in and aims to address the health care workforce needs at critical intervention points along the pathway through four specific goals:
Create dedicated pre-college and college pathway programs through collaborations with the College of Menominee Nation and the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe University to increase recruitment, participation and engagement, as well as retention of health professions students with a commitment to engaging with Native communities along a continuous pathway of program support and engagement.
Establish pre-faculty development pathway, increase coordination and support of faculty retention, as well as community engagement and research with Native communities.
Develop new Indigenous health and medical curriculum offerings.
Evaluate IIMAGIN’s contributions through a culturally responsive framework regarding Indigenous health professional pathways and medical education with the Wisconsin Evaluation Collaborative at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Wisconsin Center for Education Research.
Progress Update
In its first two years, IIMAGIN has made positive progress towards project goals. NACHP has worked in partnership with the College of Menominee Nation and the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe University to deliver eight events as part of their precollege and college pathways program. Event survey results show that students demonstrated an increase in their interest in health careers and expressed plans to continue education.
The team also launched the Visiting Student Opportunity, which offers rotations for visiting medical students to explore a specialty of interest and learn more about UW-Madison residency programs. They have fostered partnerships with eight UW Health departments who agreed to host students through this initiative. The program is open to third- and fourth-year medical students who are enrolled with a federally recognized tribe and/or have demonstrated a strong commitment to American Indian/Alaska Native communities. NACHP has supported four students’ participation in this program thus far.
In their effort to develop new Indigenous health medical education, they created a course structure to optimize access and increase capacity for Indigenous health curriculum campus-wide and secured the teaching team for the first course.
NACHP is leveraging their WPP grant to further their work. For example, NACHP has been a recipient and partner on over $11 million in funding to expand this work. An award from the US Department of Agriculture-National Institute of Food and Agriculture will address the shortage of American Indian professionals by recruiting, educating, and retaining students in food, agriculture, natural resources, and human science disciplines committed to serving the Tribal Nations of Wisconsin and surrounding rural communities. An award from the Department of Health and Human Services seeks to provide health career exposure to pre-college and college students, increase the number of qualified applicants for medical and health professional programs, expand culturally responsive and community-based learning opportunities to support student retention, and expand American Indian-specific health focused training.
NACHP is also a partner in the campus-wide Center for Indigenous Research to Create Learning Excellence (CIRCLE) initiative funded by the National Science Foundation grant to formalize support and mentorship for Indigenous graduate students and tribal community engagement.
