GARDEN CITY, Kan. — Dr. Scarlett Gard’s passion for humanitarian work took her to India and Bangladesh. After finishing her medical training, she set off for a place she knew had a diverse population in need of doctors: western Kansas.
Gard came to the meatpacking town of Garden City to work with Somali immigrants — a population that’s become the cornerstone of an effort by a growing network of rural hospitals to entice doctors to come practice in sparsely populated hamlets across western Kansas.
The innovative recruiting effort grew out of the realization that many millennials graduating from medical schools have a burning desire for international medical service. It also comes amid the backdrop of President Donald Trump’s attempts to restrict the influx of refugees into the United States from seven predominantly Muslim nations, including Somalia.
“It just kind of drew me because it surprised me that this existed in southwest Kansas,” said Gard, who moved to Garden City in September after finishing her medical residency in Wichita. “I don’t think I saw myself necessarily staying here until I realized that the same things I wanted to do — go to underserved people of different cultures — I assumed I would have to go overseas to do that, and I clearly don’t.”
The hospitals are encouraging doctors like Gard to come work with immigrant populations and learn a language and culture before heading overseas. They also offer generous time off for medical trips abroad.
The doctors are finding that people from the oppressed and war-torn countries where they want to work are in western Kansas, said Benjamin Anderson, an administrator for the Kearney County Hospital in Lakin who is behind the recruiting effort.
“So what is normally a deterrent for recruiting traditional candidates has become a cornerstone of this recruiting effort,” Anderson said, adding that all local residents — not just immigrants — benefit from having highly trained doctors working there.
