Community Engagement
Improving the Health of Our Community
NYITCOM-Arkansas is dedicated to improving access to healthcare for the underserved and rural populations in Arkansas and the Mississippi Delta Region. We are committed to cultivating opportunities for health in our families, neighborhoods, schools, and jobs, achieving greater health equity among all people throughout our region.
Arkansas ranks 48th in overall population health status due to low health indicators including obesity and a number of adults who smoke. The state also ranks 46th in the number of active physicians per capita, and 39th in the number of primary care physicians. It is our mission to meet the need for more physicians in this medically underserved area.
Programs & Partnerships
Our student doctors are actively involved in several community-based programs aimed at benefitting those in the state and region while showing our medical students the unique opportunities that exist to make a tremendous impact in a special part of the country.
Delta Population Health Institute
The Delta Population Health Institute is the community engagement arm of NYITCOM. We are a diverse team of caring specialists and experts devoted to addressing the social factors of health by promoting cultural transformation and creating health equity to catalyze thriving and prosperous rural communities of the Delta.
Baptist Memorial Health Care Partnership
This partnership agreement identifies a small number of NYITCOM-Arkansas medical students who want to train at Baptist Memorial Health Care facilities during medical school. Selected students undertake specialized opportunities and complete clerkships throughout Baptist’s 22 renowned hospitals.
First District Congressional Fellowship
Each year, one NYITCOM-Arkansas student is chosen to collaborate with the office of Representative Rick Crawford (AR-1) to identify an area of research, perform on-site visits, and spend time in Washington, D.C. to help evaluate the different funding streams provided by federal agencies to the Mississippi Delta region.
Delta Care-a-Van
The Delta Care-a-Van is a mobile medical unit used to improve the quality of health through health services and education in rural, underserved communities in the Mississippi Delta Region, making regular stops in communities throughout Arkansas and the Delta to provide preventive health services for free.
Emergency Medical Services Program
Through NYITCOM-Arkansas’ CAAHEP-accredited Emergency Medical Services program, students can gain the necessary training to become emergency medical technicians (EMTs) and paramedics, such as emergency pharmacology, patient assessment, airway management, and resuscitation.
Population Health Certificate
The Population Health Certificate course will help you understand how the conditions where we live, learn, grow, and play become key factors in driving health outcomes, and how to integrate interventions through community partnerships to improve health and catalyze health equity.
Keep Exploring
Learn more about why NYITCOM-Arkansas’ faculty, staff, and students see ourselves as change agents for generations in a part of the nation with needs unlike any other.