History
Cahaba Family Medicine Residency started in 2013 as a truly rural full spectrum Family Medicine residency program located in Centreville, AL. The mission of the program is to train residents to provide medical care to children, adults, and elderly, including care throughout pregnancy and delivery so that graduates are equipped to work in rural, underserved and international communities, capable of meeting the medical needs of the marginalized. In 2018 CFMR expanded by adding the Urban Track in Birmingham, AL. Currently, there are 3 tracks, Rural, Urban and Frontier.
Community
Living in a rural community means that you are a critical part of the medical services available for your neighbors, coworkers and friends. You see your patients as you go for a run or go to a store, or at church. You see an athlete on the field and in the clinic. You recognize familiar faces and know the families they represent. You see need, and have the ability to help meet that need.
CFMR Rural Track surpasses definition as a training program. While working closely together for 3 years incredible bonds are formed between residents that live nearby and support one another. Sincere care for one another, an unyielding team mentality and an appreciation for laughter and fun are fundamental characteristics of our rural program.
Full Scope
Family Medicine
Rural residency training closely approximates long term rural medical practice. Serving patients well in this context means being prepared to meet their procedural needs.
Our mission is to train and equip graduates to work in underserved environments whether they be in rural, urban or international communities. Recognizing similarities between resource-poor areas domestically and internationally, our residents acquire a tangible and translatable skill set and knowledge base to provide for the needs of patients in inpatient and outpatient settings. Responding to the breadth of knowledge required of a competent Family Medicine physician, our longitudinal curriculum teaches residents to integrate what they are learning on a day by day, patient by patient basis. Understanding that access to thorough prenatal and post delivery care, well child and sick child care dictates the health of Alabama families, Cahaba Family Medicine Residency has devoted significant educational time, effort and resources for residents to meet these patients' needs. Finally, whether it be obtaining their insulin through our Dispensary of Hope, assisting with access to procedural care detailed below or representing our patients' needs in Washington, D.C. advocacy in its various forms is a key element of CFMR Rural Track.
Diversity
Throughout its existence Cahaba Family Medicine Residency has welcomed, educated and graduated residents of different races, faiths, backgrounds and life experiences. We believe those life experiences, while unique to each person, when shared improve our understanding of the world in which we live and work. Engaging one another with love, sincerity and respect helps us to develop cultural sensitivity to improve our engagement with patients and their families.
Because of the vast shift of resources and cultural shifts, many rural communities are left with pervasive hopelessness and shocking inequities in health.
For these reasons and more it’s been said that rural America is the new inner city, and these areas are arguably the most marginalized areas of the United States. Our rural track is based out of Centreville, AL in a region known as the “Black Belt,” a severely economically depressed region with rich black soil that previously was the sight of wealthy white planters and enslaved black persons. For several decades now, The Health Care System has been Leaving the Southern Black Belt Behind.
This is the context in which Cahaba Medical Care was born in 2004. Long before the residency program began we were striving to promote health equity and community health for our neighbors. Over the years we have been able to expand to other communities, with many milestones along the way like when we bucked the trend of rural hospital L&D closures by helping reopen Bibb County's only L&D, which had been closed for 20 years. Then in 2013 the Cahaba Family Medicine Residency was born. Starting the residency among a population of 5,000 required lots of good old fashioned hard work and innovation. But as our program director, Dr. John Waits, likes to say, “That’s just our game.”
WE DON'T JUST WORK HERE. THIS IS OUR HOME.
Our residency is a fully immersive training program.
The majority of our residents and faculty choose to live and serve in rural Bibb County.
Our rural residents truly make a major impact in Bibb County. We provide the only obstetric care in the county, we care for patients in Bibb Medical Center, we staff the county’s subspecialty clinic as well as the nursing home, etc. Our residents truly become full-spectrum rural (or international) family doctors.
Our community engagement extends far beyond our medical involvement.
For instance, through our community center, we are also able to provide other valuable resources that address social determinants of health, including a food bank, clothing, computer skills classes, exercise classes, job retraining, etc. We also work to enhance the physical fitness of our community, with some examples including our collaboration with local government to build a boat launch on the Cahaba River for paddlers, our involvement in bringing cycling services to the county, and the dance studio we sponsor.
