Director’s Welcome

I am so pleased that you are interested in learning about the Alaska Family Medicine Residency (AKFMR)! Our program started more than 25 years ago, to prepare family doctors for full-scope family medicine practice in rural Alaska. AKFMR has been remarkably successful, with the majority of our graduates working in rural Alaska. Our residents spend time in rural Alaska throughout their training while receiving a strong foundation in continuity clinic and the inpatient setting. Please take a look at our curriculum pages for more details on how we prepare our residents to practice in any environment, including resource-limited settings.

For the class that will start residency in July 2026, we have decided to recruit a class of 8 residents instead of our recent 12 residents. This represents a return to the original complement size on which the program was founded. The main reasons for this change are to allow us to focus our educational resources on a smaller class of residents and to ensure our long-term financial sustainability. AKFMR residents and faculty are excited about this change! We are making plans to grow back in innovative ways in a few years, with partnerships throughout the state. We are working to ensure this change is reflected on other websites that serve as resources for residency program applicants. Individual resident schedules will stay very similar to what they are currently. Through this transition, we will continue our focus on full-scope training to prepare you to work anywhere.

I am so proud of AKFMR and our collaborative community. We anticipate lifting the ACGME warning status when we are next reviewed by the ACGME in late January 2026. AKFMR is known for its strong focus on inpatient, obstetrics, ER, and rural training, to help prepare you for practice in austere settings with limited consultants. Through our re-accreditation process we have re-structured our outpatient clinic to maintain its key role in preparing you for your future practice, as does training in acute care settings. Outpatient clinical care helps people and communities stay healthy and remains a focus of full-scope family medicine training.

AKFMR is sponsored by Providence Alaska Medical Center and is part of the Providence Medical Group. Alaska is the “A” in the University of Washington’s WWAMI network. We are part of their Family Medicine Residency Network educational collaborative. Along with the primary support from Providence, we receive additional support from the state of Alaska, Southcentral Foundation, our tribal health partners in Bethel and Sitka, and others around Alaska.

Most of our residents’ training takes place in Anchorage, which is an exceedingly diverse community. Over 100 languages are spoken in the school district with more than 90 languages spoken by our clinic’s patients. Importantly, Anchorage is Dena’ina homeland, the traditional ancestral land of the Dena’ina Athabascan. For thousands of years the Dena’ina have been and continue to be the stewards of this land. This is Dena’ina Ełnena.

Anchorage has unparalleled access to the outdoors, including hundreds of miles of trails for hiking, biking and skiing. Plus, with Anchorage being the state’s largest city, there is so much to do here even if you don’t love the outdoors, including a vibrant arts and music community and diverse food options.

Many of our residents and faculty have deep ties to Alaska while many others first came here for work. We stay because we love the unique training and the special community that is AKFMR. We look forward to meeting you and sharing with you how training at the Alaska Family Medicine Residency will prepare you for your future practice!

Kim Thomas, MD MSPH

Program Director