Minority Faculty Fellowship Grants
These grants increase the number of underrepresented minority faculty at health professions schools.
Eligible schools can provide a stipend and a training allowance to underrepresented minority students. This helps them gain necessary skills for faculty positions and provide health services to rural or medically underserved populations.
Northern Arizona University Department of Dental Hygiene 
recruited an American Indian fellow from the Lakota tribe. The fellow coordinated the Ottens’ Dental Hygiene Hopi Health Care project, which successfully integrated dental hygiene services on the Hopi reservation.
The project provided oral health education and dental hygiene services to American Indians, by rotating dental hygiene students to the Hopi Dental Clinic on a regular basis. It was also a recruitment opportunity to get Hopi young people into health professions.
Area Health Education Centers (AHEC)
Area Health Education Centers partner communities with academic institutions to train health professionals.
By reaching out to young people in underserved communities, they help them:
- develop the skills needed to become health professionals;
- provide clinician training experiences in underserved communities; and
- provide continuing education to clinicians already working in those communities.
Centers of Excellence (COE)
Centers of Excellence are health professions schools that establish or expand programs for underrepresented minority students and faculty.
They focus on
- improving academic performance;
- developing minority health curricula and clinical education; and
- conducting research on minority health issues.
