Eastern AHEC Rural Health Immersion - Student Reflections: Annika Gallandt
Healthy Acadia has served as Maine’s Eastern Area Health Education Center (AHEC) since 2023. Our service area includes Washington, Hancock, Waldo, and Knox counties.
Maine AHECs provide community-based clinical training experiences to health professions students; encourage Maine youth to pursue careers in the health professions; offer training and continuing education programs to practicing health professionals; and develop public health approaches to address current and emerging community needs.
As part of this program, Healthy Acadia and community partners work together to create rural health immersion opportunities for health professions students to learn more about rural and underserved communities, including Rural Health Immersions (RHI) for Care for the Underserved Pathways (CUP) AHEC Scholars. and community-based experiential learning opportunities for non-CUP scholars.
We will periodically publish guest blog posts from AHEC Scholars who chose to share their experience with the program.
Guest post contributed by Annika Gallandt, Tufts Maine Track Allopathic Student. Annika participated in our June 2023 RHI and reflects on the experience.
We started our morning by meeting with Katie Sell and Lauren Sachs from Safe Harbor Recovery Home for Women and Children in Machias. Safe Harbor serves women in all stages of recovery from substance use disorder and is the only certified recovery residence in Washington County. It is also one of the only recovery homes in the state where women can stay with their children. Both Katie and Lauren emphasized the importance of this model, sharing that many mothers can’t fully focus on their recovery if their children aren’t also cared for. Safe Harbor works to meet both needs.
In our discussions with Katie and Lauren, we heard about all the work they do to create a safe and supportive environment for the women and children who stay at Safe Harbor. From community meetings to transportation support getting to and from medical appointments and the grocery store to substance use recovery treatment and programs, the needs of residents and their children are addressed from multiple angles. I was struck by the amount of community they built at Safe Harbor and the active role Safe Harbor played in the greater Machias and Washington County communities.
We then met with staff members at Eastport Health Care including, Kelly Forfa, RN, Jordan Porter, DNP, FNP, Kelly Leslie, FNP, and Alf Wakeman C-PA. Each team member spoke to what brought them to practice in Washington County, as well as some of the benefits and difficulties of practicing in rural Maine. Most of the providers enjoyed the challenge of learning how to manage patients with complex medical needs with limited access to referrals to specialists. Each provider spoke about the importance of staying up to date on a broad array of conditions and treatments and knowing where to turn for additional support. We spoke a lot about working with patients who live with substance use disorders, and Jordan highlighted his holistic and shame-resilient approach to caring for these patients in their community.
We ended our tour of Washington County with a quick trip to see the ocean at Roque Bluffs State Park and then to Vazquez Mexican Restaurant in Milbridge to have some amazing food and to do a thoughtful debrief of everything we saw over the past four days. We want to give a big thank you to our program leaders Maria Donahue and Sonya Connelly for planning and leading a memorable tour of healthcare in Washington County.