By WHITNEE ICE
St. Joseph Post
A $7 million federal grant allowed the University of Missouri-Kansas City to expand its campus to St. Joseph.
Missouri Senator Roy Blunt visited the new UMKC Medical School Campus in St. Joseph yesterday afternoon to observe how the grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration grant has been used.
Blunt started the Medical Student Education program in 2019. The program funding was doubled in 2020 to the amount of $50 million.
Blunt says this program has taken a strong foothold in the State of Missouri.
"We had a $50 million national amount of money last year," Blunt tells St. Joseph Post. "UMKC got seven of it, so that's a pretty good percentage of that money coming here and that sounds like that will happen for about four years and that $28 million or so will be enough to establish this program in a way that allows it to go forward on its own."
Blunt says these programs will not have to last forever.
"They just need to be funded long enough that you feel like you've met the needs across America of where you're providing the kind of doctors for communities that have a real need," says Blunt.
Blunt says this program is going to place doctors where we need them in the rural areas of the country.
"You're most likely to go to apply your graduate skills to where you get your training and obviously if you can get that training closer to places that are struggling to find doctors, it should apply in medicine just like it applies for entrepreneurs of all types," says Blunt.
Blunt says this funding and program allowed medical schools across America to get more funding like UMKC.