Published April 11, 2009, 12:00 AM

HEALTH AND WELLNESS: Creating home-grown health care professionals

The organizers of the new Eastern North Dakota Health Education Center hope that creating an appetite for science in young people will result in a more robust health care system in the state. The aim of the center, based in Mayville, N.D., is to develop programs that attract and retain health care providers in areas of the state that are underserved. Eighty-one percent of North Dakota has been identified by the federal government as being medically underserved, said Mary Amundson, AHEC program director and a UND Center for Rural Health assistant professor who helped develop the center. States identified as being medically underserved have a shortage of primary care professionals.

By: Ann Bailey, Grand Forks Herald