Alaska’s Graduate Medical Education Council is the latest chapter in a decades-long effort to train physicians in Alaska and build a stronger, more sustainable physician workforce for the state.
Building GME in Alaska
Alaska’s modern graduate medical education infrastructure began taking shape in the 1990s, when a group of healthcare, academic, community, and state leaders came together to develop Alaska’s first in-state residency program.
Those early leaders included:
Mike Dimino, PhD, Assistant Dean, Alaska WWAMI
Karen Perdue, State Commissioner of Health
Eligio White, CEO, Anchorage Neighborhood Health Center
Tom Nighswander, MD, Alaska Native Medical Center
Doug Bruce, CEO, Providence
John Coombs, MD, University of Washington School of Medicine Associate Dean
Tom Norris, MD, University of Washington Assistant Dean for Regional Affairs and Rural Health
Suzanne Tryck, GME and Healthcare Consultant
Barb Doty, MD, Medical Director, Anchorage Neighborhood Health Center
Harold Johnston, MD, founding Program Director of the Alaska Family Medicine Residency
Their work helped establish the Alaska Family Medicine Residency, which welcomed its first residents in 1997 and became the foundation for further graduate medical education development in the state.
Over the decades that followed, Alaska added new residency and fellowship training opportunities, including programs in pediatrics, hospice and palliative medicine, and internal medicine. At the same time, the idea of a statewide structure to support and coordinate GME continued to surface. Discussions about such a structure date back nearly 30 years.
A Statewide GME Council Takes Shape
In April 2024, the University of Washington School of Medicine/WWAMI program convened a GME Summit in Anchorage. Medical, healthcare, and community leaders came together to examine Alaska’s physician workforce needs and opportunities to expand graduate medical education.
Leaders from states with established GME councils shared their experiences and demonstrated how statewide collaboration could support residency and fellowship development, sustainable funding, workforce planning, and physician retention.
Following the summit, a multidisciplinary working group began laying the foundation for an Alaska GME Council. Over approximately 10 months, the group gathered data, studied GME council models from other states, including Montana, Colorado, & Idaho, explored sustainable funding mechanisms, engaged stakeholders, and developed the initial culture, structure and processes for an Alaska council.
The Working Group included:
Gloria Burnett, MS
Tonya Caylor, MD, Lead
Barb Doty, MD
Harold Johnston, MD
Nancy Merriman, MPH
Tari O’Connor, MSW
Gina Senko
Suzanne Tryck
Ursula McVeigh, MD
Alexander von Hafften, MD
Together, the group brought experience in clinical care, graduate and undergraduate medical education, rural health, health policy, workforce development, community health, and organizational leadership.
There was also an important connection between Alaska’s GME past and its future: Barb Doty, MD, Harold Johnston, MD, and Suzanne Tryck, who had helped lay the foundation for Alaska’s early GME development, returned to help build the statewide Council nearly three decades later.
The Founders’ Forum
In May 2025, the Working Group convened Founders’ Forum: Paving the Way for Alaska’s GME Council.
More than 90 stakeholders from over 10 Alaska communities participated, representing healthcare organizations, medical education, Alaska Native and Tribal health organizations, universities, government and public agencies, healthcare associations and policy organizations, funders, and communities across the state.
The Forum explored Alaska’s current GME landscape and workforce needs, lessons from successful state GME councils, and a proposed framework for Alaska. Participants were invited not simply to learn about the emerging Council, but to help shape and participate in it.
From Working Group to Council
The work culminated in the formal launch of the Alaska Graduate Medical Education Council in September 2025.
The new Council carried forward both the work of the 2024–2025 Working Group and decades of effort by Alaskans committed to creating opportunities for physicians to train and remain in the state.
Today, the Alaska GME Council brings partners together across organizations, professions, communities, and regions to strengthen graduate medical education, support residency and fellowship development, inform physician workforce planning, and support sustainable GME in Alaska.
The Council’s history reflects something Alaska’s GME leaders have demonstrated repeatedly: building a physician workforce is long-term work, and each generation builds on the foundation laid by those before it.
