John N. Lein papers, 1872-2005

In 1971, the UW pioneered a new approach to solving the complex problems of rural health care, under the leadership Robert L. Van Citters, then Dean of the School of Medicine, and with the support of UW President Charles Odegaard and Washington State Governor Daniel J. Evans. This experiment created a four-state regional medical education network called the WAMI Program, an acronym for the participating states of Washington, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho. Medical students from each of the WAMI states stay in their home state universities for the first year of basic studies. Then, they all move to the UW for the second year of training. Finally, the students can spend much of their third and fourth years as well as their residencies in clinical settings and communities similar to those in which they hope to practice. The WAMI program allows the UW School of Medicine to act as the medical school for nearly one-quarter of the land mass of the U.S. It has been supported financially by the participating states since its initial year, when it started with grants from the Commonwealth Fund and some federal funding.