Office of Primary Care and Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) Program

Jessie Lucas ’25 (left) and Liz Kelley ’25 celebrate after receiving their medical white coats in October 2021.

Class of 2025 medical students Liz Kelley and Jessie Lucas don’t know yet where their residency programs will take them after they graduate in May. When they are ready to set up practice as physicians, however, they know they will settle in Vermont. As recipients of the Ignat Scholars Incentive Scholarship/Loan Forgiveness Program, that choice was easy.

The incentive scholarship will forgive Kelley’s and Lucas’s medical school loans if they return to Vermont within one year of completing their medical training. Established in 2022 by founding donors David and Eleanor Ignat, the incentive aims to strengthen the physician workforce pipeline into Vermont as the state competes nationally and globally to attract and retain an appropriate and geographically distributed physician workforce. The program is open to fourth-year Larner medical students pursuing any medical specialties.

Health care recruiting is challenging across the board, but especially in rural settings like Vermont. Rural community hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes routinely face higher physician vacancy rates, lower retention rates, and longer recruitment cycles. As older physicians retire, Vermont’s physician shortage continues to rise, further threatening Vermonters’ access to health care. Offering to pay the medical school tuition for students who commit to practice in Vermont is one strategy to attract more young doctors to the state.

“An adequate supply of physicians, by specialty, geographically distributed around the state, is required for all Vermonters to have access to health care,” says Elizabeth Cote, director of the Larner College of Medicine’s Office of Primary Care and Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) Program, which was established in 1996 to improve access to high-quality health care through its focus on workforce development. “Philanthropy can have a tremendous impact on strategic health workforce development and provides the greatest opportunity to innovate.”

Paying It Forward

For both Lucas and Kelley, the desire to practice medicine in Vermont flows from their connections to the landscape, the culture, and people who share their values.

“The community here is the biggest reason I want to stay and work here. I feel so connected, especially to the medical community that has helped train and support me through medical school,” says Lucas, who plans to pursue a career in emergency medicine. “I see myself working in a rural community hospital. I also have an interest in medical education. My faculty mentors and residency advisors have supported me, and I would love to step into that role for someone else, especially another first-generation college student like me.”

Lucas grew up in downtown Chicago, where her father worked in construction and her mother was a court reporter and bookkeeper. Neither parent attended college, and Lucas says watching them labor to make higher education available to her and her brother instilled a work ethic and sense of humility. The Ignat scholarship spoke to her values of serial reciprocity, passing along a good deed to others.

“To be supported by community members—Mr. and Mrs. Ignat—eases some of the stress around the expense that goes into this field early on, and it strengthens my desire to be here because there are people here like them who open their arms to welcome students to stay and continue to practice here,” Lucas says. “There’s so much need for physicians in Vermont. To pay it forward by working here is a no-brainer for me.”

During her four years in Vermont, Lucas has developed a passion for Vermont’s outdoors. She spends free time with her partner hiking, backcountry and alpine skiing, mountain biking, enjoying Lake Champlain, and partaking in fresh local produce through community-supported agriculture.

Removing Financial Barriers

Community and a passion for outdoor recreation also beckon Kelley to practice medicine in Vermont, but her path to that decision was completely different. A native Vermonter, Kelley grew up in Shoreham, a small town near Middlebury, where she enjoyed playing tennis and lacrosse, hiking, mountain biking, and skiing. Her curiosity about the urban world led her to attend college at Boston University and then take a job in New York City’s financial services sector. She quickly realized that her Vermont values weren’t aligned with her lifestyle there and returned home to participate in the post-baccalaureate pre-medical program at UVM before applying to medical school.

“I realized how special Vermont is. The way of life and what Vermonters value are very unique,” says Kelley, whose older sister, Johanna Kelley, earned her M.D. at the Larner College of Medicine in 2017. “Being a health care provider here, you get to care for a community of people. It’s an incredibly rewarding place to practice medicine.”

Kelley has applied into internal medicine and is contemplating primary care or a specialty fellowship pathway. The Ignat incentive scholarship gives her the freedom to choose the career path and lifestyle she desires.

“It changes my perspective on what I need to do after residency and allows me to focus on the patients I want to treat, where I want to live, and the type of career I want in medicine without worrying about the financial burden of medical school,” Kelley says. “This scholarship speaks to the community that Vermont has and how people support each other.”

For additional information about scholarships that aim to strengthen the physician workforce pipeline and increase the number of new physicians practicing in Vermont with a focus on rural areas and undersupplied medical specialties, view the scholarships of the Larner College of Medicine AHEC Program.