A Week Among the Cornfields

I am happy to report the Rural Health Scholars program, a new AMSA Foundation initiative I have been planning over the past couple of months, came and went successfully this past week in Iowa City --- despite the "flood of a century"! I hosted 23 medical, dental, nurse practitioner, and physician assistant students from 14 states to learn about a whole host of rural health issues. We attended lectures on agricultural occupational/environmental health, at-risk populations in rural areas, farm safety, rural hospital quality, oral and mental health issues in rural areas, migrant and seasonal farm workers, and the rural health delivery system. We toured a local farm and identified ag trauma hazards and spent an entire day roaming the countryside in a yellow school bus, visiting migrant camps at the Williamsburg Monsanto plant and at the Conesville Bell's Melon Farms, as well as experiencing Kalona for five hours. We stopped by the swine sale at the auction house, ate a meal in an Amish woman's home, visited an old order Amish farm, shopped at the Country Store, and bought cheese and groceries at the Cheese Factory and Stringtown Grocery, respectively. It was a fantastic tour! And we also managed to have a little fun --- including a picnic in Hickory Hill Park, a Shakespeare production of a "Comedy of Errors", and a group dinner at the Red Avocado. I am trying to navigate the program in such a way that it will continue forward, but I'm going to take a break and study for the second half of part two of the Boards in four weeks ... plus start my fourth year tomorrow with neurology! Unbelievable! The time is passing too quickly ...