The Colorado Plateau Center for Health Professions launched a new family medicine residency program for northern Arizona in 2020. The need has never been higher, the solution never clearer and the opportunity never better to develop the only Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) physician residency program in Arizona with a community health center as the sponsoring institution. Unique not only in its teaching model but also its location, it is one of the only ACGME residency programs north of Phoenix and the only program owned by a regional AHEC center.

About Elk Ridge Community Health

Elk Ridge Community Health serves 11 communities and over 50,000 patients across northern Arizona, providing quality medical care to all.

Elk Ridge Community Health’s mission is to improve the health of northern Arizona communities through accessible, affordable, quality, and compassionate care. The vision is to be a national leader in delivering excellent healthcare services that improve the lives of patients in the communities we serve.

Elk Ridge Community Health provides a wide range of patient and family-focused health services, including integrated interprofessional team-based care to provide high quality healthcare. Elk Ridge Community Health has a very active obstetrics program; our providers deliver more than 50% of newborns in Flagstaff annually. Behavioral medicine and clinical pharmacy are integrated with primary care at our residency and other clinical sites.

The services offered by Elk Ridge Community Health are:

• Primary Care & Family Medicine
• Pediatrics
• OB/GYN
• Clinical Pharmacy
• Behavioral Health
• Dental Care
• Physical Therapy
• Telemedicine
• HIV and Hepatitis C Care
• Community Outreach Programs

*Services vary by location

Mission and Goals of the Residency Program

The family medicine residency program seeks to extend the mission of Elk Ridge Community Health to improve the health of northern Arizona communities through accessible, affordable, quality, and compassionate care.

Our goals are to prepare a group of culturally humble, skilled, and dedicated family physicians for comprehensive primary care practice in rural and frontier northern Arizona. Elk Ridge Community Health has affiliations with A.T. Still University School of Osteopathic Medicine in Arizona, The University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix, and The University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson.

Northern Arizona Service Region

Elk Ridge Community Health’s service region consists of Apache County, Coconino County, Gila County, Mohave County, Navajo County, and the northern part of Yavapai County, occupying some 53,300 square miles across the northern third of Arizona. This land includes the largest ponderosa pine forest in the world, the stunning beauty of the Grand Canyon, the Great Basin Desert in the north and east, and the Mojave Desert in the west. The regional population is over 500,000, with a racial/ethnic breakdown of 54% Non-Hispanic White, 26% Native American/American Indian, 12% Hispanic/Latinx, 6% Black/African American, and 2% Asian. With a population of 70,000 people, Flagstaff is the area’s largest city.

In the northeast corner of the state, the Navajo Nation occupies 27,000 square miles of the service region, about the size of West Virginia. Other major American Indian reservations in the service region are the Hopi Reservation and the Fort Apache Reservation for the White Mountain Apache Tribe.