Drs. Schmitz and Miller Temple publish Targeted Rural Health Education conversation on StoryCorps

Back in June, Dr. Kay Miller Temple, web writer for the UND Center for Rural Health, and Dr. David Schmitz, chair of the UND School of Medicine & Health Sciences Department of Family & Community Medicine, recorded a conversation on rural health for StoryCorps, an NPR- and Library of Congress-adjacent organization whose mission is “to preserve and share humanity’s stories in order to build connections between people and create a more just and compassionate world.”

The conversation, recorded at the CMS Health Equity Conference in Washington, D.C., focused on the Targeted Health Rural Education (TRHE) program, which charges UND medical students with the task of writing an educational article on a major health need targeted at rural community newspapers and other publications in a specific community. As Miller Temple notes, since the program began in 2017, dozens of students have published 50 articles in dozens of community newspapers.

“Of the 50 stories we’ve published, one of the things that has so surprised me is that 30 percent of those stories are about mental health topics,” said Miller Temple. “Our medical students are not backing away from these sensitive issues. And the feedback that we’re getting from the rural newspaper editors is they’re very happy to see those mental health stories too. They recognize the need for their communities to know more.”

Listen to the full conversation here.

And learn more about the TRHE at the UND Center for Rural Health.