Cheshire Medical Center-Dartmouth Health Program

Program Identity & Fit

Cheshire Medical Center/Dartmouth Health is a new, community-based family medicine residency built around a 169-bed rural referral hospital in Keene, NH, with select rotations and elective access at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center and Dartmouth Health Children's for tertiary and pediatric subspecialty exposure. The program's identity centers on training full-scope rural family physicians, emphasizing continuity clinic panels, procedural skills, obstetrics, reproductive and gender-affirming care, integrated behavioral health, and care across clinic, hospital, and post-acute settings via a longitudinal PGY-2/3 curriculum designed to mirror real rural practice patterns. Its faculty are largely physicians with rural and underserved practice backgrounds (Idaho, Wyoming, Vermont Mountain towns, Appalachia), and the program explicitly frames its mission around building a rural primary care workforce for the Monadnock Region rather than subspecialty or academic output. Research is not a structural pillar; instead the program values clinical versatility, community rootedness, and readiness to deliver comprehensive, relationship-based rural care.