Health care cuts threaten homegrown solutions to rural doctor shortages

CHICO — Olivia Owlett chose to do her primary care residency in this Northern California college town largely because it faces many of the same health care challenges she grew up with.

Owlett is one of four residents in the inaugural class of a three-year family medicine residency program run by the local nonprofit Healthy Rural California. She is the kind of doctor the organization seeks to draw to the far north of California, a region with severe physician shortages.

That’s because Owlett knows in her gut what a lack of health care means, having seen family members drive hours to see a specialist or simply forgo care in her hometown of Wellsboro, a hamlet in Pennsylvania. She did rural training at medical school in Colorado. And because her husband attended Chico State, the couple has