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Peoria Students Heading to Uganda, Streator With Common Goal: Improving Rural Healthcare

University of Illinois College of Medicine Peoria
Tim Shelley / WCBU
University of Illinois College of Medicine Peoria

Peoria medical students will soon head off to one of two radically different locales with the same goals in mind: improving healthcare access in rural communities.

Six University of Illinois College of Medicine Peoria students will travel to Uganda for two weeks this month to develop prototype solutions to their healthcare challenges as part of the four-year Innovation in Rural Global Medicine Program. Another two will go to Streator, about an hour north of Peoria, to work at the OSF-Streator Center for Health.

"This is about how we change clinician education, I think, to really create clinicians for the future, who can mindfully solve some of the largest problems that we see," said Dr. Sarah Stewart de Ramirez, OSF Innovation's vice president and chief medical officer for clinical innovation. 

Faridat Folarian-Amode is a third-year medical student. She said the IRGmed has taught her more than just medicine.

"Medical students don't really learn about the business side of things, and we don't really learn how to innovate," she said. "But also, we were taught how to make things work in a low-resource setting. And so I think that is going to be great for me feeling comfortable wherever I go globally, since that has always been my goal." 

She said she hopes to learn about being a doctor in a global rural environment during her two weeks with the Mbarara University of Science and Technology in Uganda. Mental health treatment and prenatal care in rural Africa are particular priorities for researchers there. The Streator students will tackle on food insecurity issues.

This is the first wave of students to travel as part of the four-year elective IRGmed program. OSF Innovation and the University of Illinois College of Medicine Peoria are also working on forging relationships in Asia and Latin America for similar exchanges.

Next year, students will complete and present a capstone project on how innovation can be used to reduce health disparities both in American and worldwide. 

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Copyright 2021 WCBU. To see more, visit WCBU.

Tim Shelley is the News Director at WCBU Peoria Public Radio.