Cascades East has built an amazing community of support for its residents, and I feel lucky to have been a part of that community for the last three years. I would recommend this program to anyone interested in rural, full-spectrum family medicine who is also hoping to learn from and among a great group of people.

Helen Carlson, DO '16

OHSU's Campus for Rural Health

Klamath Falls represents one of OHSU's commitments to rural healthcare.  With 80% of our graduates entering practice into rural communities, we are proud of our graduate outcomes and the impact on the health of rural communities across Oregon and beyond.  We serve as the Academic Headquarters for the Campus for Rural Health and rural experiences for OHSU's health professional schools.  Through the Rural Campus students rotate and cooperate inter-professionally in our rural environment, thus exposing them to the vibrant scope of practice and community available only to those who wish to practice off the beaten trail.   

OHSU and UC Davis partner to reduce health disparities

OHSU and UC Davis aim to transform medical education to better serve the health care needs of under-resourced rural, tribal and urban communities and reduce persistent and unacceptable health disparities in underserved populations, fueled by a $1.8 million American Medical Association Reimagining Residency grant.

Called the California Oregon Medical Partnership to Address Disparities in Rural Education and Health (COMPADRE), the initiative will place hundreds of medical students and resident physicians to train at 10 health care systems, 16 hospitals and a network of Federally Qualified Health Center partners from Portland to Sacramento.

South Central Oregon

Oregon encompasses 97,000 square miles and has a population of 4.2 million. While over 70 percent of these people live in a narrow strip in the western part of the state, the remaining 30 percent live in rural, often very remote areas with limited access to medical care. Klamath Falls is culturally and economically linked to these small rural communities in Oregon.  We serve a 10,000 square-mile area in south central Oregon and northern California which has a catchment population of around 100,000 people.

Frontier Medicine

In addition, the residency program has established close ties with four of these small communities: Lakeview, John Day, and Enterprise. Our residents spend a five-week required rotation in one of those communities so that they can gain experience in working side-by-side with successful, confident role models in rural health care delivery.