For the health of Smith Island

It is not much more than thirteen miles from Ewell to the hospital in Crisfield, but for residents of the small waterfront community, twelve and a half of those miles are across the open waters of the Chesapeake Bay. So it is not surprising that a program charged with increasing health care access for rural populations uses the island to introduce future practitioners to the needs of such underserved communities. Located roughly in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, Smith Island falls within the boundaries of Somerset County, the poorest of Maryland's Eastern Shore counties. For the Eastern Shore Area Health Education Center (ESAHEC), a state-supported but private nonprofit agency founded to foster rural health care, Smith Island offered a perfect environment to expose an interdisciplinary group of health professions students to the realities of rural health care. Through a joint venture with the Somerset County Health Department, Smith Island is a destination for ESAHEC-sponsored trips that are part of the clinical experience for selected nursing, allied health, social work, and medical students in the University of Maryland system.