Rural Immersions

One Theme, Followed All The Way Down

Each immersion takes a single rural health problem and spends two or three days following it through a real place — the clinicians treating it, the agencies working around it, and the people living with it.

Students prepare beforehand with assigned reading, documentaries and online exercises, then travel as a cohort. Past immersions have been built around rural opioid misuse and around nutrition and food insecurity.

Ask About the Next Immersion

Where Students Have Been

Rural Immersion participants prepare apples while volunteering in a community food kitchen.

Winter 2025: Food Insecurity and Mental Health

February 21–22, 2025 · Sutton and Gassaway area

Students volunteered at the Shiloh food kitchen, joined a cooking-on-a-budget session in Gassaway, toured Mountaineer Food Bank, and took part in a Mental Health First Aid overview and debrief at Sutton Public Library.

Rural Immersion participants serve a prepared meal to community members.

Fall 2025: Food Insecurity, Nutrition, and Mental Health

October 16–18, 2025 · Sutton, Frametown and Gassaway

Students toured Mountaineer Food Bank, prepared and distributed a community meal with Always Blessed Connections, completed Mental Health First Aid activities, and kayaked on the Elk River.

Participants around a kitchen table snapping and preparing green beans during a hands-on food-preservation session.

Nutrition and Food Insecurity

October 2023 · Gilmer, Braxton and Sutton

Food preservation and hands-on canning at the Normantown Historical Community Center, a cooking-on-a-budget workshop, kayaking on the Elk River, and a volunteer shift at the Mountaineer Food Bank in Gassaway.

Read the Full 2023 Agenda

Author John Temple speaking to seated participants in front of a screen showing the cover of his book American Pain.

Rural Opioid Misuse

2019, 2021 and 2022 · Lewis and Upshur counties

Sessions with law enforcement on drug paraphernalia, a social worker on children in foster care, a pharmacist’s perspective, and a keynote from John Temple, author of American Pain. Site visits to the Community Recovery Center and Opportunity House in Buckhannon.