The path to better health lies just outside the door of the Lansing, Kan., internal medicine practice of Richard Whitlow, MD.

A walking and biking trail that runs the length of the city starts at the east end of Whitlow’s parking lot.

Spurring off of that trail is another quarter-mile track Whitlow built around a drainage basin.

“We decided that instead of putting grass in our run-off, we’d put a walking trail around it,” Whitlow said. “Almost every morning in the summer, we have seven or eight people using it.”

Patients in other rural Kansas towns are not as fortunate. Trails and playgrounds may be located across busy highways, sidewalks may not be conducive to walking, and fresh produce may be a considerable drive away.

But thanks to a $52,500 grant from the United Methodist Health Ministry Fund, which is administered by KU Endowment, medical students in the University of Kansas Rural Primary Care Practice and Research Program will begin to study these barriers to health during their 2009 summer internships.

“All of our students today have tablet computers, and we want to put them to use,” said Kim Kimminau, PhD, director of community health research at KU Medical Center. “Whether a student is in Atwood or Quinter, they can be mapping the features, barriers and resources in the community. They can map where the 7-11 and Pizza Huts are and how far the grocery store might be from residential areas. They can map where the community parks or walking trails are, how accessible they are and other criteria, such as whether there is safe lighting.”

The goal of the project is to increase awareness of all of the different kind of barriers to better health that citizens within a particular community can encounter. After analyzing those obstacles to good health, possible strategies for reducing or eliminating them will be presented to community leaders.

“Our hypothesis is that when communities have more resources and fewer barriers, we expect they will advocate for healthier lifestyles,” Kimminau said.

The Rural Primary Care Practice and Research Program started in 1992 as an elective designed to give students between their first and second years of medical school a taste of rural family medicine under the guidance of a mentor. Since then, the program has expanded with the help of funds from the J.H. Baker Trust of LaCrosse, Kan., to include a research component. Past programs have studied the efficacy of patient education materials and direct observation of the doctor-patient relationship.

“In the early years, this research was never published,” said Allen Greiner, MD, MPH, director of research in the Department of Family Medicine. “In the past decade, we’ve seen the formalized research take off more and several papers published from each summer’s study.”

Once this summer’s data is processed, the students who collected it will present their findings to the communities that hosted their study. Then they will prepare it for publication and wider dissemination.

“One of our real hopes is that the research will come back to inform the primary care leaders in the communities our students are working with,” Greiner said. “We want the research to circle back to help the very doctors who support our students’ learning.”

Once doctors have this information, they can present it to their patients, in hopes of improving their community’s health. As Dr. Whitlow learned in Lansing, it is important to have the entire community informed and on board.

“Better health is not just a medical thing or a city thing or a school thing,” Whitlow said. “If everyone has not bought in, the program will not be successful. But by identifying and starting with the people who are more likely to take the lead, success is achievable.” +