Introductions – Lisa Hileman, community member for Eastern West Virginia Rural Health Education Consortium was introduced to the group.

Approval of minutes – With the exception of Betsy Degges name being misspelled, the minutes of the November 2000 committee meeting were approved unanimously (Hileman/McCutcheon).

Old Business
a. Student/Community Member Retreat – Copies of the notes/recommendations were passed out to the committee.  Jim Welshonce suggested that the recommendations go to the site coordinators and local consortia boards for feedback/comment.  Community members have not been used in consortia and need to be accessed more.  Comments were made regarding the mentor program which was part of the retreat recommendations that this program would be a great asset to students and should be implemented.  What does a community member need to know in their community?  What do they need to know about their community?  The Committee discussed specific rural health issues in communities that students might be interested in.  Parr mentioned that the LRC committee will be developing a web site off the RHEP web page that will have web sites of interest to students and community members.  These sites will have download information as well as possibly a rural health section that will highlight unique rural health issues that may be of interest.  Robert Walker, MD did a fabulous presentation to the site coordinators at their last retreat on “Rural Health 101” where he discussed medicine in appalachia and unique rural health issues.  The committee seemed interested in this discussion and asked if Dr. Walker might be willing to come to the next meeting for a rural health presentation to the group.  April will check on this.

New Business
a. Committee Chair – The committee discussed electing a new chair since Annie McIntosh has resigned her position as chair and will no longer be able to participate on the Advisory Panel.  Parr Thacker agreed to act as interim chair of the committee until recommendations can be made for a community member willing to chair the committee.
b. Other new business – Dennis and Lisa will be attending the Community Campus Partnerships for Health (CCPH) conference in San Antonio Texas in May where they will be conducting a story telling session on community member and student advocacy issues around the WVRHEP program.  Two students from the Student Advisory Panel, Frankie Tomblin WVU Pharmacy and Marcus Speaker WVU Medicine will be participating in the session as well.  It was suggested that Dennis and/or Lisa report on their session at the meeting in May.

With no further business, the meeting was adjourned.