Aviva Health Center, a Federally Qualified Health Center, is constructing the Aviva Health Center in rural Oregon. Aviva will construct a 31,350 sq. ft. expansion to its existing facility which will better support team-based health care and the Roseburg Family Medicine Residency Program (RFMR), which welcomed its first cohort of eight resident physicians in July 2020. The expansion will add 34 exam rooms and four procedure rooms.

RFMR is a three-year program with eight students each year, which at full capacity will host 24 on an 8-8-8 rotation. Residents will hone their rural family medicine skills while providing health care to thousands of patients annually, increasing access to care and reducing wait times. The program brings to the rural community doctors who would normally go to Portland, Eugene or another larger urban areas to complete residency. The residency program is further focused on training doctors for rural communities, where there is a severe shortage of physicians. The ultimate goal of the residency is to retain physicians once they complete residency, enticing them to stay in Roseburg or practice in other rural Oregon communities. Studies indicate more than 50% of doctors practice within 100 miles of where they completed their residency, a statistic that bodes well for Roseburg and surrounding small communities whose health care workforces need shoring up.

Without the NMTC funding, the project wasn’t sustainable. In the past, community giving has been a major source of funds for the organization, but because of the COVID-19 pandemic local businesses were unable to provide support and NMTCs filled this gap.