The AHEC’s mission is to enhance access to quality health care by developing a statewide AHEC program that will retain a diverse and culturally sensitive health workforce that provides the highest quality of care for all by developing partnerships with school districts, health care providers, private foundations, and communities that share the AHEC’s goals and missions; by emphasizing primary prevention and primary care and all other areas of health care shortage; and by providing technologically sound opportunities through Tele-Health initiatives offering continuing education to health care providers and other distance-learning exposures.

• Goal 1:  Regionalize and decentralize professional health care training in Mississippi.
• Goal 2:  Improve the quality and availability of health care in medically underserved areas through community academic partnerships.
• Goal 3:  Establish a population-based rural health database and place UMC-trained residents in rural areas as a recruitment network for medically underserved areas in Mississippi.
• Goal 4:  Provide health profession training programs for health care needs specific to communities and teach how to use local resources.