Initiative Funds Institutions that Train Primary Care Health Professionals to Provide Care for Underserved Communities
November 10, 2020 — Riverside University Health System (RUHS) received a $625,000 grant from the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD) to expand access to primary care, making it the only hospital in the Inland Empire to win the full award. The grant will allow RUHS to train an increased amount of residents on campus and provide the resources they need to succeed.
The grant allows the continued funding of essential resources for the program, such as, funds to cover resident’s attendance to the AGME national conference, board review materials and high school pipeline resources. These are crucial assets that allow the program to excel. This level of excellence supports continued attraction to some of the nation’s top family medicine resident candidates, who may then be converted into full-time employees.
“We are so honored to receive this grant from OSHPD,” said Parastou Farhadian, RUHS Family Medicine Resident Program Director. “It is important now, more than ever, that we continue to expand access to our most vulnerable community members through enhanced primary care training for students, who will then be leaders in our community that help shape and grow overall well-being of our community families.”
RUHS’s 49-year-old Family Medicine Residency Program qualified for the grant award based on its ability to attract and admit underrepresented and underserved community members. To win the grant, another requirement is the development of residency programs that train students in underserved areas and place their graduates in those regions. This is the 49th year that the program has received this grant. During the life of the program, RUHS has been able to host over 300 residents.
The $625,000 awarded to RUHS was part of OSHPD’s pledge of $35 million in grants to 86 primary care residency programs to expand primary care access to underserved Californians. The California Healthcare Workforce Policy Commission, which recommends funding awards for multiple medical disciplines under the Song-Brown Healthcare Workforce Training Act, approved award recommendations for the Primary Care Residency Program earlier this year.
Medical disciplines under the Primary Care Residency Program include family medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics, gynecology and pediatrics. The Song-Brown funds now support nearly 730 primary care residency positions annually and has funded 185 new positions since 2017.
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