Honors in Underserved Primary Care (HUPC)

HUPC at UAMS is a multi-year, stipend supported, guided track that provides medical students with camaraderie, faculty and staff support, UAMS resources and educational opportunities to encourage students to pursue community based primary care as a medical career. The HUPC curriculum and program activities have been specifically designed to enhance each student’s understanding and practice of Primary Care medicine in rural and urban underserved communities, particularly in Arkansas.

Students will gain early clinical experiences with area Family Medicine physicians. Each student will choose, investigate and develop a longitudinal project; explore and evaluate resources then write a literature review to support that project; and participate in other primary care related activities.

Honors in Underserved Primary Care HUPC, an integral part of Regional Campuses division*, was launched in 2020-2021 with three core goals:

1. To train medical students by offering a comprehensive, longitudinal, extra-curricular experience in rural and urban underserved medicine
2. to sustain medical student interest in in practicing primary care in such areas
3. to retain these medical students in our state once they graduate.

*The eight UAMS Regional Campuses across Arkansas serve as an educational outreach network for UAMS and are the principal means to decentralize medical and health professional education throughout the state. Its mission is to improve the health of Arkansans by training those skilled, caring professionals and delivering high quality patient-centered primary care to underserved communities.

• Multi-Year, extracurricular, guided program
• Stipend supported
• Increased marketability
• Small, selective cohorts (Max 15 students per cohort)
• M1 hands on experience in Primary Care/Family Medicine clinical settings
• Connect with UAMS Regional Campus faculty: urban/rural health care providers
• Network with Primary Care/Family Medicine physicians