About Western Montana Area Health Education Center

What is an AHEC?

The Area Health Education Center (AHEC)
http://wmtahec.org/ program was developed by Congress in 1971 to recruit, train, and retain a health professions workforce committed to underserved populations. The AHEC program taps the resources of academic medicine to address local community health needs. The strength of the AHEC Network is its ability to creatively adapt national initiatives to help address local and regional healthcare issues.

Nationwide, 54 AHEC programs, with over 200 regional centers work with 120 medical schools and over 600 allied health programs and schools of nursing to attract, train, and retain a workforce committed to underserved populations.

The Western Montana Area Health Education Center (WMT-AHEC) was established as the third of four regional AHECs in the state of Montana in September, 2008. Its mission is to connect students to careers, professionals to communities, and communities to better health.

WMT-AHEC is located in the College of Health Professions and Biomedical Sciences http://www.health.umt.edu/default.php at the University of Montana-Missoula, and is closely affiliated with the 13 health professions programs offered by the University and its College of Technology http://www.cte.umt.edu/ .