Med student spends time in Alaska as part of tribal medicine training - Oklahoma State University

OSU-COM astatine the Cherokee Nation aesculapian pupil Ashton Glover Gatewood, right, fishes with her household adjacent Wasilla, Alaska. Gatewood completed a aesculapian rotation astatine the Benteh Nuutah Valley Native Primary Care Center arsenic portion of her Tribal Medical Track education.

Wednesday, November 16, 2022

Media Contact: Sara Plummer | Communications Coordinator | 918-561-1282 | sara.plummer@okstate.edu

For aesculapian pupil Ashton Glover Gatewood, spending clip successful Wasilla, Alaska, treating patients and learning from physicians astatine the Benteh Nuutah Valley Native Primary Care Center was some rather akin and precise antithetic to her clip successful tribal wellness facilities successful Oklahoma.

Gatewood— a subordinate of the Choctaw Nation and a descendant of Cherokee and Chickasaw ancestors— is simply a third-year aesculapian pupil astatine OSU College of Osteopathic Medicine astatine the Cherokee Nation successful Tahlequah, and portion of the archetypal cohort of Tribal Medical Track students.

“One of the champion aspects of doing the Tribal Medical Track is learning from different tribal facilities. There is truthful overmuch that we person successful communal but besides differences between our nations,” Gatewood said. “It’s been amusive proceeding stories of dip nett fishing, gold mining and moose hunting successful Alaska and trout fishing, cervid hunting and stomp dancing successful Oklahoma. One overarching taxable is the emotion that we stock for our communities and anticipation for the aboriginal of wellness and wellness successful Indian Country.”

The extremity of the Tribal Medical Track is to hole students for palmy matriculation into tribal communities and wellness systems successful an effort to amended the superior care doc workforce shortages faced by tribal wellness attraction systems, said Lori Boyd, manager of objective acquisition astatine OSU Center for Health Sciences. Currently there are 20, second- and third-year OSU aesculapian students enrolled successful the TMT.

As portion of the TMT, students are required to implicit a information of their rotations astatine tribal wellness facilities, which don’t person to each beryllium located successful Oklahoma.

Gatewood said the Alaska Family Medicine Residency Program is simply a highly regarded program for rural, tribal and wilderness medicine.

“Since I person household successful Palmer, Alaska, I thought this was a large accidental to sojourn with family, get unthinkable grooming and question to a tract that has agelong been a nonrecreational and idiosyncratic bucket database item,” she said.

Ashton Glover Gatewood, center, with household medicine physicians Dr. Virginia Hunter, left, and Dr. Susan Steffans astatine the Benteh Nuutah Valley Native Primary Care Center successful Wasilla, Alaska.

The wellness attraction halfway successful Wasilla serves each American Indian and Alaska Natives who are enrolled successful a federally recognized tribe, and Gatewood was capable to enactment with family medicine physicians, pediatricians and different specialty providers. She besides learned astir a antithetic mode of beingness and worth system.

“The Alaskan manner was precise connected to the land, household and often adjacent subsistence based. Because of the agrarian and adjacent distant quality of the communities, they valued self-sufficiency, the outdoors and harvesting nutrient from the land,” she said. “This mode of viewing beingness is inspiring maine to marque much healthful fare and workout decisions and displacement priorities from a much materialistic and rat-race mindset to 1 that focuses connected household and wellbeing.”

Boyd said Gatewood is simply a susceptible and goal-driven pupil with a agleam aboriginal who wants to amended the wellness and lives of those successful her community. Through this rotation in Alaska she has broadened her experiences and stepped retired of her comfortableness zone.

“I was precise excited for Ashton and pleased to cognize that she expanded her learning of tribal medicine done an acquisition with tribal populations successful Alaska,” she said. “The Tribal Medical Track astatine OSU is garnering attraction crossed the nation, and as our students proceed to prosecute unique, out-of-state learning experiences similar Ashton has, the mode is being paved for aboriginal TMT pupil to bash the same.”