The shadow experience was in relation to a class assignment on career choice. The students were paired with the St. Anthony Regional Hospital center that was of most interest. Four students spent time in radiology and one student interviewed several nurses in their respective nursing environments.

West Central Iowa Area Health Education Center (WCI AHEC), located in Carroll, Iowa at the St. Anthony Regional Hospital and Nursing Home (SARH) is dedicated to providing services to individuals in the WCI AHEC 14 county catchment area.  WCI AHEC focuses on the mission of recruitment, training, and retaining quality health care professionals in rural and underserved areas. Staff at WCI AHEC use best practices to recruit kindergarten through senior high school students into the health care field by offering shadow and internship opportunities to students in west central Iowa. With the addition of Amy Renze, clinical outreach coordinator, WCI AHEC will create and maintain clinical rotation sites for health profession students.

In the last three months WCI AHEC has created opportunities for high school students to experience the health care field and make informed decisions for their future. Ten Carroll Community high school seniors have participated in internship programming at various health profession locations. Students will complete their one semester internship project with a video presentation at a coffee held for their mentors. In order to accomplish these types of WCI AHEC programming, collaboration with hospital administration and personnel is necessary. St. Anthony Regional Hospital commits to compassion, responsiveness, responsibility, teamwork, dignity/respect, and integrity. "This commitment to service excellence compliments the mission of AHEC. Together SARH and AHEC collaborate to serve the underserved in west central Iowa and help develop the continuum of a quality healthcare workforce”, said Sharon Meyers, Area Health Education Center Director.

About AHEC
Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) recruit, train and retain a health professions workforce committed to the underserved. Developed by Congress in 1972, the AHEC program aims to increase access to quality healthcare in rural and underserved areas.

Although AHEC’s have been around for nearly 40 years, Iowa was one of the last states to build an AHEC program. In 2007, Des Moines University received a federal grant to create a network of four regional AHEC’s in the northern half of the state, coordinated through a central program office. Each regional AHEC is established locally and designed to assess and meet the needs of the underserved citizens in the region.
The AHEC program combines best-practice methods of workforce development with creative collaborations among key healthcare stakeholders in local communities. Each center develops programming specific to the needs of its service area in order to address regional health issues and increase workforce. AHEC programming accomplishes this by:

• Organizing activities for kindergarten through undergraduate students to foster interest in the pursuit of health careers.
• Connecting health professions students to career opportunities by setting up clinical experiences in rural and underserved areas.
• Offering continuing education courses to practicing healthcare professionals that address the unique challenges of providing quality care to the medically underserved.