The Texas Institute for Graduate Medical Education (TIGME), an ACGME-accredited sponsoring institution and an Ibn Sina Foundation institution, today announced an academic affiliation with Sul Ross State University and its College of Health Sciences.

The affiliation joins graduate medical education with higher education in one of the largest and most rural regions of Texas, where communities have long faced shortages of physicians and other health professionals, and will expand opportunities for teaching, research and scholarly collaboration between the two institutions.

Planned areas of collaboration include pathway programs that introduce Sul Ross students to careers in medicine through shadowing, mentorship and exposure to clinical training settings; interprofessional education that brings TIGME residents together with Sul Ross nursing and health sciences students to learn team-based care; joint research on rural and border health; and shared access to academic resources, faculty expertise and clinical teaching opportunities.

The affiliation is especially significant for TIGME’s planned Family Medicine residency in Eagle Pass. Working with United Medical Centers, the Maverick County Hospital District and Fort Duncan Regional Medical Center, the two institutions can build a continuous pathway within the same community, from undergraduate education to residency training and practice.

“The College of Health Sciences was built to serve the people of this region, and that means preparing the health professionals they need close to home,” said Dr. Dean Culpepper, dean of the College of Health Sciences at Sul Ross. “This affiliation gives our students a clear path toward medicine and lets them learn alongside resident physicians. Together with TIGME, we can show young people from West Texas and the border that a career in health care is within their reach, and that their own communities are where they are needed most.”

“Rural and border communities need physicians who understand them,” said Sohail Rao, MD, MA, DPhil, Designated Institutional Official of TIGME. “Sul Ross has educated the students of this region for more than a century. Partnering with the university allows us to cultivate that talent from the classroom to residency and, we hope, into a lifetime of practice in the communities that raised them.”

Additional programs and collaborative initiatives will be announced as the affiliation develops.