(Madison, WI) Thanks to a generous private donation, a new grantmaking program called the Orion Initiative with a mission to improve health in rural Wisconsin communities, is launching on June 4 in Madison.
The Orion Initiative invests in the power of partnership between frontline rural providers and the academic medical community to improve rural health care.
The Orion Initiative is administered through the Office of Social Health Sciences and Programs at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health and led by CEO Dr. Amy Kind. Dr. Kind is also the inaugural associate dean of the Office Social Health Sciences and Programs.
In close collaboration with its frontline rural partners, the Orion Initiative has identified several key mission-aligned focus-areas currently in development, with the goal of reaching additional Wisconsin communities with these opportunities in the coming years.
“People living in rural areas disproportionately experience poor health and difficulties with health care access. With cornerstones of workforce development and rural clinician support, the Orion Initiative is creating a new, academic-rural partnership-based blueprint for meeting the challenges facing rural healthcare providers in Wisconsin,” says CEO, Dr. Amy Kind.
Over the past year, the Orion Initiative has established partnerships between The Richland Hospital and Clinics, Gundersen Moundview Hospital and Clinics (becoming Emplify Health by Gundersen-Friendship), both Southern Green Lake County Ambulance and Berlin Emergency Medical Services (EMS), and the academic medical community at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. The program is expected to spread beyond these initial partner sites in the coming year.
Initial focus areas for the Orion Initiative and its partners include pediatric EMS training, primary care physician recruitment and subspecialty training.
“Through the Orion Initiative, our family medicine physicians were given the opportunity to collaborate with UW Rheumatology specialists to develop an innovative subspecialty training program aimed at reducing rheumatology patient referrals, decreasing patient travel to Madison and surrounding areas, and creating active, supportive partnerships between our family medicine physicians and UW specialists,” says Bruce Roesler, CEO of The Richland Hospital and Clinics in Richland Center, Wisconsin.
In Green Lake County, Berlin EMS chief Evan VandenLangenberg says, “Rural EMS responders face unique challenges in caring for pediatric patients. Our partnership with the Orion Initiative is providing a strong connection with the UW Emergency Medicine physicians and access to the cutting-edge, hands-on training we need to serve our youngest patients.”
Additionally, to further promote workforce development, the Orion Initiative has provided funding for four full tuition scholarships of four-years each to students entering the Wisconsin Academy for Rural Medicine (WARM) program at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health in the next academic year. Orion plans to continue scholarships in the coming years. The WARM program admits 26 medical students annually who demonstrate a strong commitment to practicing rural medicine in Wisconsin after graduation.
