Oregon Health & Science University OHSU Health Madras Program

Program Identity & Fit

The OHSU Three Sisters Rural Track Program is a rural-focused family medicine track pairing an intern year in Portland with two years based at St. Charles Madras, a critical access hospital in Central Oregon, explicitly built to train physicians for the underserved, tribal, and Latino communities of Jefferson County. Clinical training spans a Federally Qualified Health Center (Mosaic Madras), IHS Warm Springs Health and Wellness Center, and rural continuity clinics, with curriculum intentionally incorporating the culture and heritage of the Native American, Latino, and rural populations served. As a new consortium program with its own Central Oregon-based director working alongside the Portland program, it explicitly frames its mission as addressing rural health equity gaps and anticipates that residency location influences where physicians ultimately practice. Research infrastructure exists through the parent department's PRIMER Center and health-equity/Latino-health scholarship, but the track's identity is oriented toward producing full-spectrum rural family physicians rather than researchers.