AHEC in West Virginia: a case study. Area health education centers

This case study describes the area health education centers (AHEC) program in West Virginia, spanning 30 years from a first-generation project at Charleston in 1972 (AHEC 1) to a newly funded statewide program (AHEC 2). The outcome is an evolving university-community partnership designed to meet changing work-force and community health needs in the heart of rural Appalachia. West Virginia University's (WVU's) application of the original Carnegie Commission AHEC recommendations (1970) resulted in the Charleston AHEC, now part of the Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center of WVU. AHEC today trains more than 135 residents and interns, and one-third of the third-year and fourth-year WVU medical students. Charleston offers clinical and continuing education for nurses, dentists, pharmacists, and allied health professionals. A health sciences library, distance learning, and a network of primary care clinics help define Charleston's unique AHEC role. This AHEC hub continues to meet the classic Carnegie goals of recruiting and retaining health professionals, and providing access to care in the original service area and statewide. Based on the Charleston experience, four new federally funded AHECs are being developed to link rural primary care residencies with the state-funded West Virginia rural health education partnerships. These rural consortia AHECs are applying the concept of community competency, a performance-based methodology, to integrate learning while achieving the goals of Healthy People 2010.