For physicians called to underserved communities, broad-spectrum rural medicine, and courageous presence where resources are few and the need is great.
Train where physicians are still asked to do more. At Cahaba’s Frontier Campus, you’ll learn full-spectrum family medicine in underserved rural communities shaped by resilience, scarcity, and deep connection. This is a residency for physicians who want more than referral-based medicine… they want to become adaptable, capable doctors prepared to care for patients when they may be the closest thing to a specialist for miles.
Rooted in a faith-informed mission and immersed in the communities of Marion, Camden, and the Alabama Black Belt, our residents grow into clinically excellent, deeply compassionate physicians… supported by mentors, shaped by shared purpose, and prepared to practice confidently in places where broad responsibility and steady presence matter every day.
Why
Frontier?
Our Frontier program prepares residents to deliver whole-person care in resource-stretched environments where trust, adaptability, and broad responsibility matter every day. Here, you won’t just learn how to carry responsibility… you’ll learn how to do it steadily, thoughtfully, and with the support of mentors and communities that share the work.
Training in the Black Belt means caring for patients with undifferentiated symptoms, delayed diagnoses, transportation barriers, and limited specialty access. Residents are often the first to begin the workup, make the diagnosis, and start treatment.
In many ways, you become the cardiologist, pulmonologist, rheumatologist, and advocate your patients may not otherwise have access to.
What makes Frontier Distinct
This is what makes Frontier such powerful preparation for broad-spectrum rural practice.
Broad Responsibility
Train in settings where physicians are trusted to think broadly, adapt quickly, and manage needs with limited resources and specialty support.
“You’re not just choosing a program. You’re choosing the kind of doctor you’re becoming.”
Resource-Conscious Medicine
Learn to practice excellent medicine in communities where access gaps, transportation barriers, and delayed care require creativity, judgment, and resilience.
Faith-Shaped Formation
Join a mission-minded learning environment that values compassion, sacrifice, service, and the dignity of every person.
Full-Scope Rural Mastery
Build confidence across outpatient medicine, women’s health, procedures, inpatient medicine, behavioral health, geriatrics, and emergency care.
Care Beyond the Health Center Walls
Participate in RV-based outreach, home visits, nursing home care, and community-based medicine in hard-to-reach places.
Prepared for Anywhere
Graduate ready to serve in frontier communities, rural hospitals, underserved regions, global clinics, and places where physicians are called to carry more.
Global Footprint
Each resident receives a fully funded International Medicine rotation every year.
Training Beyond Exposure
It is training built around adaptability, judgment, and readiness for the beyond.
Clinical Excellence
Advanced Procedures
Endoscopy, POCUS, treadmill stress testing, spirometry, central lines, paracentesis, and lumbar punctures.
Women’s Health & OB
IUD/Nexplanon placement, colposcopy, endometrial biopsy, prenatal care, and obstetrics.
Integrated Rural Care
HIV medicine, addiction medicine, wound care, chronic disease management, and behavioral health integration.
Rural Hospital Medicine
Develop confidence caring for patients in rural inpatient environments where physicians are expected to manage broadly and lead calmly.
Unique Outreach
RV-based outreach in hard-to-reach communities, Rural Emergency Hospital experiences, nursing home care, and Osteopathic Recognition.
Derm & MSK
Skin biopsies, excisions, complex joint injections, osteopathic medicine, and hands-on procedural training.
““If you want to integrate into the community where you practice, this is the program for you. I have seen my patients at church, the grocery store, restaurants, and other community events. Some of them are my neighbors. This is truly the environment to train in if you want to be ‘The Town Doc.’”
By The Numbers
Our residents don’t just meet requirements… they build uncommon breadth, adaptability, and readiness.
1,147
Average Inpatient Encounters
Average Inpatient Encounters
227
Average ICU Encounters
Average ICU encounters
90+
C-Sections for Advanced OB residents
Vaginal Deliveries
READY FOR THE BEYOND?
Come train where broad responsibility, rural resilience, and mission-driven medicine meet.
Schedule a rotation and experience what it looks like to become ready for places where physicians are still called to carry more.
History
Cahaba-UAB Family Medicine Residency started in 2013 as a rural Family Medicine residency program located in Centreville, AL. The mission of the program is to train residents to provide medical care to children, adults, and elderly, including pre- and post-natal care, so that graduates are equipped to work in rural and international communities, capable of meeting the medical needs of the marginalized. CFMR expanded by adding the Urban Track in Birmingham, AL (2018), followed by the Frontier Track in Marion and Camden, AL (2022). Currently, there are 4 tracks - Rural, Urban, Highlands, and Frontier.
Community
The Frontier Track places residents in two of the most remote areas of our state; Marion (Perry County) and Camden (Wilcox County). Living in a rural community means that you are a critical part of the medical services available for your neighbors, coworkers and friends. You see your patients as you go for a run or go to a store, or at church. You recognize familiar faces and know the families they represent. You see a need, and have the ability to help meet that need.
In addition to building relationships in the community, working closely together for 3 years provides opportunity for incredible bonds to form between residents that live nearby and support one another. Sincere care for one another, an unyielding team mentality and an appreciation for laughter and fun are fundamental characteristics of our program.
Full Scope
Family Medicine
Our mission is to train and equip graduates to work in these environments whether they be in rural, urban or international communities. Recognizing similarities between resource-poor areas domestically and internationally, our residents acquire a tangible and translatable skill set and knowledge base to provide for the needs of patients in inpatient and outpatient settings. Our curriculum incorporates full spectrum Family Medicine training, as you’ll see in the section entitled “The Program.” Responding to the breadth of knowledge required of a competent Family Medicine physician, our longitudinal curriculum teaches residents to integrate what they are learning on a day by day, patient by patient basis.
Understanding that access to thorough prenatal and post delivery care, well child and sick child care dictates the health of Alabama families, Cahaba-UAB Family Medicine Residency has devoted significant educational time, effort and resources for residents to meet these patients' needs. We provide residents with comprehensive training that will serve as the foundation on which they will build their careers.
BECAUSE OF THE VAST SHIFT OF RESOURCES AND CULTURAL SHIFTS, MANY RURAL COMMUNITIES ARE LEFT WITH PERVASIVE HOPELESSNESS AND SHOCKING INEQUITIES IN HEALTH.
Our Frontier track is based out of Marion, AL in a region known as the “Black Belt,” a severely economically depressed region with rich black soil that previously was the site of wealthy white planters and enslaved black persons. For several decades now, The Health Care System has been Leaving the Southern Black Belt Behind.
The Cahaba-UAB Family Medicine Residency Frontier Track was funded by HRSA's Teaching Health Center Graduate Medical Educational Program (THCGME) in the midst of masks, PCR tests, and mRNA vaccines. The Frontier Track of the Cahaba-UAB FMR features an innovative, longitudinal, integrated curriculum in Alabama's Black Belt at Cahaba Medical Care locations in Marion and Camden, with the residents' hospital time at J.Paul Jones Hospital in Camden, Alabama.
This track will come alongside our Rural Track in Centreville, and our Urban Track in West End (Birmingham), functioning as one unified Family Medicine program, in 3 tracks on 7 different campuses.
Our community engagement extends far beyond our medical involvement.
For instance, through our food pantry, we are also able to provide other valuable resources that address social determinants of health. We also work with other non-profit organizations, faith communities, K-12 schools, and state universities to name a few. Our social work team provides patient assistance services to help our uninsured and underinsured patients get the medications they need, and our clinical behavioral health specialists help with improving our patients mental and spiritual well being outside of their medical visits.
We believe that a person’s health doesn’t exist in a vacuum and that we can care for the community as a patient by volunteering our time, talents, and treasures in real and tangible ways that directly benefit our patients and their families. Being visible in our communities allows us to earn trust with our patients and in turn leads to better interactions in the exam room. Our team participates as servant leaders in many important non-medical avenues such as collaborating with local government leaders on healthcare committees, and there are several community events throughout the year that our staff participates in, including a Trunk or Treat, the Marion Made obstacle competition, the Marion Rodeo, and many other events to build a sense of community between our patients and our staff.
