Coos County Family Health Services has received a nearly $500,000 grant to establish a Teaching Health Center Residency Program, which is aimed at filling the region’s need for more physicians.

With the grant from federal Health Resources Services Administration, the organization will be used to set up a three-year family medicine residency program to train new doctors, who are sorely needed, Ken Gordon, CEO of CCFHS, told The Conway Daily Sun.

“There is a real problem around the country having enough doctors,” Gordon said. “It is really hard to attract people.”

Gordon said nationwide data supports the concept that doctors who do their residency in a certain locale often put down roots in the community.

Plans call for four doctors a year participating, he said, adding that the program will be structured other residency programs.

“We are effectively creating a teaching institution,” Gordon said.

He added that similar programs have been successful elsewhere including the Dartmouth Family Medicine Residency in Concord as well as in Augusta, Maine, and Burlington, Vt.

“It would be a boon for the entire North Country,” he said. “It would be a really good thing for the region if we pull this off.”

Gordon told the newspaper the initiative is part of long-term strategy to bring more doctors to the North Country and that his organization is working with North Country Healthcare, a network whose members are Androscoggin Valley Hospital in Berlin, Upper Connecticut Valley Hospital in Colebrook, Weeks Medical Center in Lancaster and North Country Home Health and Hospice Agency in Littleton.

The goal is to get the program accredited by November 2023, with its initial class of residents to matriculate into the program by July 1, 2024.