Jones is part of the University of Louisville School of Medicine’s , based at Baptist Health Deaconess Madisonville, which offers students the opportunity to complete medical school in a small community.

It has been a perfect fit for Jones, who will receive her medical degree on May 11 from the and hopes to practice in a rural community.

“I want to practice wide-spectrum family medicine in Western Kentucky. I like the community clinics and small towns,” Jones said. “My husband is from Owensboro and we both like our families, so we want to stay in Western Kentucky.”

Physicians are badly needed in rural areas of the commonwealth, where many communities are medically underserved.

“If you look on a map of health professional shortage areas, almost all of Western Kentucky is blocked out. They don’t have enough of anything,” Jones said.

Jones, who grew up on a farm with her three siblings, is grateful for her down-to-earth upbringing.

“I was raised by a great set of parents. My dad has made an impressive career in the coal mines, runs the family farm and in his little spare time he is a volunteer firefighter,” Jones said. “I am outgoing and talkative just like my dad, but I don’t think I could ever be as hardworking. My mom works as a bookkeeper, taught us about Jesus and was very involved in our education.”

She also is inspired by her parents’ generosity in the community.

“Seeing how hard my parents worked and how involved they were in communities was enough for me to say I want to come back somewhere similar to home and be involved in that same way.”

Jones sees medicine as a perfect way for her to be involved.

“I like that it’s challenging, I’m always reading and learning and problem solving,” she said. “I also think there is a gap in medicine. I have a really strong faith and I think you miss that a lot in the medical community—doctors that pray and believe in healing and the other side that so many patients also do. So, filling that gap is a big part of why I am in medicine. I want to love others.”

After being introduced to Trover as an undergraduate at Murray State University, Jones spent a summer participating in the Trover Campus Rural Scholars Program. That experience sealed her decision to practice rural medicine.

“I was offered acceptance at four medical school programs, but I chose UofL largely because of the great experience I had in undergrad at the Trover Campus,” Jones said.

Although she did part of her training in Louisville, Jones likes the environment in Madisonville, which provided more one-on-one time with attending physicians.

“I see people all the time I know. It’s different to be somewhere you know people but also, it’s a different feeling from a big university hospital,” Jones said. “People know my parents or I know people’s parents, so it’s a different level of connection.” 

Jones will reach her goal a year sooner than most medical students thanks to Trover’s Rural Medicine Accelerated Track (RMAT), a program allowing students who intend to practice in a rural Kentucky community to finish medical school in three years rather than the typical four.

Jones and Bradley Watson, the 2024 graduates of the RMAT, are completing the program a decade after the first graduate finished in 2014. Jones and Watson also both were awarded the 2023 , which supports RMAT students.

In July, Jones will begin residency training at the UofL .

“It doesn’t really feel real,” she said. “I am finishing a year early so it doesn’t feel like I’ve been doing it that long. But I’m really excited to see what comes next.”

Watch the video:

Kentucky has a severe shortage of health care providers, with at least some portion of 113 of the state’s 120 counties designated as Health Professional Shortage Areas, including parts of Jefferson County. Recent projections rank Kentucky lowest among the states in meeting the need for primary care physicians by 2025.

To attract and train medical students with an interest in practicing primary care in medically underserved communities, the School of Medicine will enhance existing programs that train students in the underserved rural environments, assist individuals from other careers who want to prepare for medical school, create a new program to train medical students in an urban environment and provide scholarships to support students financially in all of these programs.

“The UofL School of Medicine is honored to have been selected as a recipient of the HRSA grant and is committed to creating pathways that support workforce development for primary care careers in medically underserved regions,” said Jeffrey Bumpous, interim dean for the UofL School of Medicine and vice president of medical affairs. “University leaders recognize the projects and programs supported by this funding are critical to the institutional mission of both the university and the School of Medicine and aim to sustain the efforts beyond the four-year term.”

UofL has a long history of preparing physicians for practice in rural and smaller communities through the , started in 1998 with the goal of increasing the number of physicians practicing in rural areas, and in existing UofL family medicine residencies in Glasgow and Owensboro.

“Students tend to practice what they are taught and where they learn it. Our idea is to enhance our training programs with a focus on improving their educational experience in primary care, particularly in underserved communities,” said Kelli Bullard Dunn, vice dean of community engagement and diversity for the UofL School of Medicine, who leads the project. “At the UofL School of Medicine, we are in a unique position in that not only do we serve rural parts of the state, but we have an urban, underserved core right in our backyard. We would like to take what we have learned from the Trover Campus and replicate part or all of that in the urban environment here in West Louisville and other underserved areas.”

Medical students in the complete their final two years of medical school at Trover Campus, located in Madisonville, Kentucky, hosted by Baptist Health Deaconess Madisonville. Of the 170 physicians who have graduated from the Trover Rural Track so far, 75% practice primary care and 43% practice in rural communities.

“The Trover Campus has been successful because we are able to get more rural students into medical school and then into rural practice by supporting them all the way through the process, starting with high school,” said William J. Crump, associate dean of the UofL School of Medicine Trover Campus. “This grant holds the promise of enlarging our campus, but most importantly building an urban underserved counterpart.”

Three programs to achieve the grant goals

The grant project focuses on three programs aimed at increasing the number of physicians who choose primary care specialties of family medicine, general internal medicine, pediatrics and internal medicine-pediatrics and encouraging them to practice in underserved communities.

First, UofL will increase participation opportunities for students in the Trover Rural Track and expand primary care clinical training for students in conjunction with the UofL family medicine residency programs at Glasgow and Owensboro.

Second, a new urban training program will be created, modeled on the Trover program, that provides medical students opportunities to train in medical facilities in West Louisville and other communities that provide care for underserved populations. This project will involve partnerships with community health systems such as UofL Health, Family Health Centers and others.

In addition, the project calls for enhancement of the UofL , which prepares individuals who have a bachelor’s degree in another field to enter medical school. Of the 114 students who have completed the Postbaccalaureate Premedical Program since it began in 2009, 98% have been accepted into a medical school and 36% of those who have completed residency programs now practice in primary care fields.

The new funding will allow this program to recruit more students from medically underserved communities who are interested in practicing in those areas after completing residency training and to improve access to medical school for them with scholarships and additional academic support.

“This new grant allows us to help even more people fulfill their dream of becoming a physician. A lot of the postbaccalaureate premedical students have come from underserved populations or underserved areas, including rural areas. Having more folks from rural areas and underserved communities going into medicine is a great thing for Kentucky,” said V. Faye Jones, UofL Health Sciences Center associate vice president for health affairs and diversity initiatives and co-lead for the grant project.

Students in each of the three programs will receive academic and financial support with coaching and scholarships to help ensure their success in applying to and completing medical school.

“Everyone deserves the best quality health care we can provide, and that means having the best quality of talent in the medical school pipeline,” said Rep. Morgan McGarvey, who supported the grant proposal. “I’m excited for UofL and for the future of Kentucky health care with this HRSA Medical Student ����ֱ�� Program grant to address the primary care provider shortage. We need to be doing everything we can to ensure we are supporting the primary care providers of tomorrow, and I’m proud UofL is leading the way.”

See photos on from the Oct. 9 press conference announcing the new funding. 

The Kentucky 3RNET Consortium — which also includes the Kentucky Office of Rural Health (KORH), the Kentucky Primary Care Association (KPCA) and the Kentucky Rural Health Association (KRHA) — will maintain and promote Kentucky-specific health care job postings on the (3RNET), a nonprofit online portal that helps job candidates more easily find health care openings in rural and underserved communities and helps community health centers, critical access hospitals and rural health clinics recruit candidates for open positions.

Consortium members will jointly manage Kentucky’s presence on the 3RNET site to expand the types of jobs posted and increase the use of the service throughout the commonwealth among both employers and candidates seeking jobs. This is the first time that a state’s postings at the 3RNET site will be monitored and maintained by a group of partners.

“Our commonwealth faces significant health care personnel challenges. This new consortium leverages the unique perspective and expertise of each organization to engage with job seekers and employers,” said Brent Wright, associate dean for rural health innovation at the UofL School of Medicine and the brainchild behind the consortium. “If we can fill vacancies in multiple health disciplines, we will improve access to health care services throughout the state.”

Director Ernie Scott said bringing the four organizations together to collectively address health care workforce shortages in Kentucky communities makes perfect sense.

“Workforce shortages cannot be singlehandedly addressed by just one organization in Kentucky or any other state. Instead, we’ve got to take a ‘village’ approach — we’ve got to come together as a unified team with a unified purpose,” Scott said. “Working together, this consortium will allow us to have a greater impact than any of our organizations could have individually.”

Ashley Gibson, ’s workforce program director, called the collaboration between organizations “essential” for the recruitment and retention of employees.

“Workforce shortages in our state are making it harder for people in many communities to access care,” she said. “This collaboration hopes to reverse that trend and actually expand access to health care services.”

Executive Director Tina McCormick said her organization is always looking for ways to support its members and partner with organizations that have a similar mission.

“Access to care is vital and without the workforce to support that care, our rural areas get left out again,” McCormick said. “We hope with this partnership we will build strong bonds across the state to provide job seekers access to open positions and provide employers a mechanism to locate prospective employees for their vacancies.”

3RNET, which works at the national level to improve rural and underserved communities’ access to quality health care through the recruitment of physicians and other health care professionals, allows health care facilities to post their open positions online at and lets health care professionals conduct free searches of those job openings. State-specific pages on the website — which contain information about communities, available job opportunities and loan repayment programs — are maintained by 3RNET members, including the newly formed Kentucky 3RNET Consortium.

UofL has a longstanding commitment to educate physicians for rural practice, including the Trover Rural Track in Madisonville, begun in 1998, where UofL medical students may elect to spend their final two years of medical school in a rural community hospital, the Glasgow Family Medicine Residency program, established in 1997, and the Owensboro Family Medicine Residency Program. These programs educate physicians in a rural or community hospital setting to increase the number of physicians who decide to practice in smaller communities.

UofL also co-administers the Kentucky Area Health ����ֱ�� Center (AHEC) to improve the recruitment, distribution and retention of health care professionals in medically underserved areas throughout the state. By leading the creation of this new consortium, UofL underscores its commitment to improve the health of all Kentuckians.