20 Alaska Native students are training to bring health care home to rural communities

When a village has no local clinician, getting care can mean a flight to Anchorage. Twenty Alaska Native and American Indian students are working to change that — training as nurses, midwives, doctors and more with scholarships from the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, many with the goal of practicing in the rural and tribal communities they come from.

Keely Baumgartner, connected to the Aleutian/Pribilof Islands Association, is earning a master's in nurse-midwifery at the University of Colorado and wants to work as a certified nurse-midwife in rural Alaska. Andrea Storer, of the Arctic Slope Native Association, is in medical school at the University of Washington, training to become a pediatrician for Alaska Native communities. Renee Fliris, of Eastern Aleutian Tribes, is finishing a Doctor of Nursing Practice at the University of Minnesota and aims to work within the Indian Health Service.

The other recipients are spread across regional tribal health organizations — Bristol Bay, Norton Sound, Maniilaq, Yukon-Kuskokwim, Southcentral and more — studying everything from psychiatric nursing and clinical psychology to family nurse practitioner degrees, with a few reaching into civil engineering, health information management and business.

The consortium awarded 20 scholarships this year from 142 applicants, ten worth $5,000 and ten worth $2,500. The smaller award is new, and it opens the door to part-time students for the first time — a change that matters for people balancing school against work and family. Applications for next year's cycle open in March.