Achieving 85: UND administrators and North Dakota legislators talk ‘ND85’
UND’s School of Medicine & Health Sciences looks to boost the state’s healthcare workforce with an ambitious new project
Facing an audience of physicians at a recent North Dakota Medical Association (NDMA) meeting, Dr. Marjorie Jenkins, dean of the UND School of Medicine & Health Sciences (SMHS) and the University’s vice president for health affairs, paused to let the figures on the screen behind her sink in.
“We saw more than 1,800 total applicants to our M.D. program last year, just over 100 of whom were North Dakota students,” she explained. “The delta between total and North Dakota applications was more than 1,600.”
Seeing these numbers, she tells her colleagues, the medical school’s admissions team got to work on narrowing that gap.
After the SMHS Admissions Committee screened applications and offered interviews to approximately 10% of those 1,800-plus applicants – more than 80 of whom were from North Dakota – today’s M.D. Class of 2029 consists of nearly 50 North Dakotans out of a class size of nearly 80, Jenkins said.
Translation: UND’s team reduced the in-state / out-of-state enrollment gap from far more out-of-state applications to a majority of North Dakota matriculants on-site at UND today.
‘North Dakota 85’
As Jenkins’s audience of physicians understood well that night, this gap-narrowing matters profoundly for North Dakota’s healthcare future.
The state is, after all, is in the midst of a physician shortage.
According to the School’s 2025 Report on Health Issues for the State of North Dakota, UND’s namesake is already short more than 200 physicians.
The case is similar – if better – for UND’s physician assistant (P.A.) program. For the most recent application cycle, 7% of completed applications were applicants from North Dakota but the program ended up with over 70% North Dakotans as matriculants.
Part of the challenge, Jenkins said, is that North Dakota has traditionally lagged behind other states in the number of college students it sends to healthcare education programs of all types.
Fortunately, her team has a plan: North Dakota 85 or “ND85.”
“The question arose during my first couple of visits to Bismarck, when one of our representatives asked me why we don’t have more North Dakotans in our medical school,” Jenkins said, explaining how the North Dakota Legislative Assembly’s most recent higher education funding bill (SB2003) includes a statement encouraging the SMHS to shoot for 85% North Dakota students in its M.D. and P.A. classes.
So Jenkins promised the legislature that she and her team would get to work on boosting the number of North Dakotans applying to and getting through these programs. “I said, ‘We are the one of the best funded public medical schools in the country, and you’re right. We should do better.’”
School ties
Although students with “indirect” ties to North Dakota already constitute a vast majority of this year’s first-year M.D. and P.A. cohorts, the School is looking to ensure that even more North Dakotans with direct ties to the state get to and through UND’s healthcare education programs.
Why? Because one of the major factors determining where health providers end up practicing is family. In other words, regardless of where they’re from, most physicians and physician assistants prefer to practice close to home and/or where their extended family resides. “The legislature graciously gave us five years to get this done,” the Dean added of the 2030 date listed in SB2003. “We aim to get there faster than that. It’s a huge benefit to be part of a university with record-breaking enrollment – 15,844 students in Fall 2025. UND’s recruitment strategies have already greatly benefited ND85.”
To that end, the UND and SMHS student recruitment teams have built a series of strategies into ND85 that should both better prepare North Dakota middle school, high school, and undergraduate college students for professional-level study in medicine and the health sciences and entice them to apply to the state’s only M.D. and P.A. programs.
Such efforts include more in-person visits to N.D. high schools, greater participation in the state’s healthcare-focused Scrubs Camps and Scrubs Academies, improving partnerships with local healthcare institutions and undergraduate college advisors, more outreach to pre-med student organizations in the state, supporting UND’s Indians Into Medicine (INMED) program, and better outreach to ND HOSA advisors and HOSA events.
Plus something called PCAT.
“We’re actively planning a Primary Care Accelerated Track that would place graduates into our state’s family and internal medicine residencies more quickly,” Jenkins said. “There’s a lot of enthusiasm in the legislature around pathwaying students into our rural communities.”
As Jenkins outlined, she and her leadership team at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine at Greenville developed a similar fast-track program. And she’s confident it can happen in North Dakota. “This way, students save a year, they get tuition and fees reimbursed if they enter one of our North Dakota residency programs, and communities in the state get a minimum five-year commitment from these doctors to practice in one of North Dakota’s healthcare provider shortage areas.”
On the road (again)
Such outreach efforts include not only the Dean herself but UND’s Alumni Association & Foundation (AAF).
Having already taken one trip to central and western North Dakota with Jenkins, Peter Johnson, director of government relations and public affairs for the AAF, added that his group is encouraged by ND85. Since the legislation became law in May, Johnson and Jenkins have already visited with nearly two dozen state lawmakers on the school’s ongoing provider recruitment efforts.
“We had 21, 22 legislators we connected with,” Johnson said of one recent trip he and Jenkins undertook that brought them to Rugby, Minot, Velva, Bismarck, and Jamestown. “She’s making a very positive impression.”
Adding that “there’s always been a very positive feeling around UND’s School of Medicine and Health Sciences,” Johnson noted that legislators have been “very impressed” with Jenkins to date. Policymakers “all understand the value of providing opportunities for our own students – keeping them here and keeping trained physicians in the state,” Johnson said.
‘Win-win for everybody’
One such legislator is Fargo-based State Representative Steve Swiontek.
A veteran lawmaker, Swiontek said that he’s heard from both physicians and legislators about the need for the entire state to do more to retain health providers of all backgrounds in North Dakota. “We want to support and fund the medical school to where it should be,” Swiontek said. “And legislators understand that if more of those individuals who apply to medical school here are North Dakotans, the odds are higher that they’ll stay in North Dakota [to practice].”
Recognizing that there will always be graduates who leave the state, Swiontek added that he is “seeing that more and more people want to stay in North Dakota. They want to reside here. Or sometimes, when they’ve left North Dakota, they come back.”
The bottom line, said Swiontek, is that ND85 “is going to be a win-win for everybody.”
Senator Tim Mathern agreed. Although the Fargo based legislator did add that even if it’s true that the proportion of North Dakota-based M.D. and P.A. students has dropped a bit at UND, this isn’t automatically a “bad” thing. “Another way of looking at it is: we made an investment in the School of Medicine & Health Sciences – the new building – which is positive,” he said. “So people in our neighboring states got more interested in sending students here. This can help increase overall quality.”
The medical school’s upgraded physical space in Grand Forks has helped recruit more applicants from around the region, that is, making the admission process more competitive and increasing the School’s national reputation.
Besides, Mathern pointed out, more than a few of these out-of-state recruits end up practicing in North Dakota after they graduate. “I, for one, have always felt that getting out-of-state students here is actually positive in that we have the potential to increase the health workforce [in North Dakota],” Mathern said, noting how a large percentage of the 1,700 physicians practicing in North Dakota are not originally from the state.
Grassroots effort
Back in Grand Forks, Jenkins called ND85 “very much a grassroots effort” that spans counties, stakeholders, and institutions. “It will reach down even into middle schools and get our students who are from those areas back to those areas to speak to younger students,” she said of tapping SMHS students as ambassadors to help UND foster connections with local communities. “When I told some of our students about this idea, they said ‘Oh my gosh – I’d love to go back and talk to my community about UND.’”
Because that’s how news travels fastest in North Dakota: word of mouth.
“It’s really going to be very much like most things that happen in North Dakota,” Jenkins smiled. “With everyone coming together to make it happen.”
