Rural Health Program

If you want to shape health care, the rural setting is the place to do it.

University of Wisconsin‒Madison Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) students can customize their degree to stand out in the job market and prepare for specialized career paths.

Rural Health Program

Our Rural Health program allows you to tailor your education to your interests. In this program, you’ll learn how public heath intersects with health care in rural settings. Students completing this program will be innovators in rural practice settings, capable of serving their rural communities through expanding novel patient care models, collaborating with interprofessional colleagues, and practicing at the top of their license.

As the most accessible health care provider, pharmacists play a vital role in many rural communities, often the first point of contact for most people and sometimes the only health care professional for some patients. Pharmacists working in rural areas must have great breadth of knowledge and clinical skills — from running immunizations to battling public health crises, and from developing innovative new patient services to coordinating care and everything in between.

After completing the Rural Health program, PharmD graduates enter the workforce ready to serve communities located far from metro areas and/or with limited access to medical centers and help change lives in improving the health of residents.

The Rural Health program is open to third-year PharmD students.

Specialize in rural health care

Specialized coursework within this program focuses heavily on the needs of rural and underserved populations, with emphasis on preventative care, addiction, mental health, and policy to drive positive change. You’ll learn from top rural pharmacy leaders to explore innovative pharmacy practice models. The program features hands-on experience to immerse students in rural pharmacy practice.

• The Rural Health program can be completed during your PharmD program with no additional time to degree.
• Open to third-year PharmD students, who will then take courses specializing in rural health, project management, and service implementation incorporating a longitudinal project.
• The unique Practice Innovations course shows students how to manage health care projects and provides hands-on experience in developing services and implementing interventions so students can apply what they’re learning in the classroom as they go.
• In their fourth year of the PharmD program, students will have at least two of their Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experiences (APPEs) in rural settings, or choose the School’s rural-focused residency-track APPE and complete the majority of their eight rotations in a rural environment.
• Students in the program also are Wisconsin AHEC (Area Health Education Centers) Scholars, which is a national recognition the student pharmacists will carry forward. The AHEC program, also two years, is concurrent with the rural health program and includes a rural immersion, where an interprofessional group of students spends five days in a rural community, visiting health clinics, hospitals, and community centers.