The Road to a Better Georgia

“Our philosophy is that for our students to serve Georgia, they first need to know and love Georgia.”
– Dr. Erica Brownfield,
Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
School of Medicine

While many Georgians were taking advantage of their last chance for summer vacations, 64 new medical students were taking a different kind of trip. Over three days, the inaugural class of the University of Georgia School of Medicine saw cutting-edge technology, including a simulation lab and a robot that assists in surgery. They also explored cities and towns across Georgia, met with residents, and engaged in deep conversations about community, relationships, and healthcare.

For these students, the journey to becoming physicians began with learning about the state they may one day serve.

“Our philosophy is that for our students to serve Georgia, they first need to know and love Georgia,” says Dr. Erica Brownfield, senior associate dean for academic affairs at the School of Medicine. “The only way they are going to do this in medical school is to get out of the classroom and start learning about the people, communities, healthcare systems, and challenges in Georgia. It brings a different level of understanding when students experience them firsthand.”

The Physician Shortage

The Georgia Road Trip was developed through a partnership between the School of Medicine and UGA Public Service and Outreach, in part to address a specific need.

Georgia continues to face a physician shortage, ranking 39th nationally in active patient care physicians and 41st in public medical students per capita. The School of Medicine will help address this need by expanding medical education opportunities in Georgia, strengthening the physician workforce, and improving access to care in medically underserved communities.

Chelsea Peterson, the director of growth and strategy at Upson Medical Regional Center, leads students on a tour through the Thomaston, Georgia, facility. UGA’s Archway Partnership coordinated stops throughout the three-day bus tour.

Nineteen counties have no family medicine physician; 42 counties have no internal medicine physician; 63 counties have no pediatrician; 77 counties have no emergency medicine physician; and 82 counties have no OB-GYN physician. Ten counties have no physician at all.

The physician shortage is more than an inconvenience for patients living in these counties—it creates barriers to care. Patients might have to drive to neighboring counties for appointments and possibly experience longer wait times for specialists. But what about patients without access to transportation or those who are too ill to travel? Without proper medical care, small health concerns can progress into chronic illnesses and life-threatening diseases. This is the reality for many Georgians, whose access to healthcare depends on where they live.

It’s why a new pipeline of doctors for Georgia is crucial and why the University of Georgia School of Medicine is so critical to our state.

To Serve Georgia, You Have to Know Georgia

The School of Medicine recruited a talented inaugural class of 64 future physicians committed to serving Georgia and improving the health of its communities.

The Peach State faces high risks for heart disease and a high infant mortality rate, but the statistics are not one-size-fits-all. The most pressing health concerns in metro Atlanta aren’t the same in the South Georgia farmlands or the North Georgia mountains. Future physicians should understand those differences to serve patients effectively. And what better way to understand these differences than to see them firsthand?

Woven into the new student orientation, the tour included visits to Macon, Thomaston, Warner Robins, Dublin, and Sandersville.

Medical student Skylar Dillon (left) and Dr. Shelley Nuss (right), dean of the medical school, chat at the Crooked Finger restaurant in Dublin, Georgia.

“We want our students to recognize that they are not simply training to become physicians. They are preparing to become trusted members of communities across our state,” says Brian Steele, associate dean for admissions at the School of Medicine.

For Selma Atic, a UGA medical student from Cumming, hearing directly from Georgians about health challenges and opportunities gave her a new perspective on her state and possibilities for her career.

“This tour helped me realize how close-knit people are in rural communities,” Atic says. “Seeing how doctors here see their patients around town, like in a coffee shop, and get to know them on a more personal level has given me a new perspective and appreciation for rural medicine.”

Local providers got to showcase the communities they’ve worked in and have grown to love.

“Excellent medicine isn’t determined by the size of the hospital, it’s about how much people care,” says Dr. Edward Adeniyi, cardiologist at Upson Regional Medical Center in Thomaston. “They may not remember what you say, but they’ll remember how you made them feel. I am a part of this community now, and I want to take care of patients; I can really do that here.”

The tour also highlighted UGA’s mission to serve the state. Through partnerships with communities across Georgia, Archway Partnership—a unit of Public Service and Outreach—connects university resources to community priorities, making its faculty ideal for coordinating the tour. For UGA medical students, those connections show how medicine is more than simply diagnosing patients. It’s also about understanding people, building trust, and becoming a part of the communities they serve.

For Brownfield, lasting impact is exactly the point.

“The sooner students learn about and love Georgia, the more likely they are to return to care for and serve Georgia as physicians.”