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The Medical College of Wisconsin is launching a scholarship program, giving full-ride scholarships to five medical students and training them to work in Milwaukee communities in need of doctors.The four-year “Health Equity Scholars Program” aims to funnel more health care providers into Milwaukee’s historically underserved neighborhoods, many of which are in the inner city.Twenty-five-year-old Dalicia Simpson is one of the medical students in the inaugural cohort.”I’ve worked so hard to get to this point,” Simpson said. “Every step that I’ve taken up to this point has been for this moment.”Simpson grew up in Milwaukee and attended Rufus King High School. She earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus, but always planned to come back to Milwaukee to be a doctor.Simpson said her lived experience led her to want to start her own health care practice in Milwaukee.”Being in an under-represented minority group, I got to see (the) different types of healthcare we got, versus communities that are the majority,” Simpson said.Of Milwaukee’s 33 zip codes, 12 are designated “health professional shortage areas,” according to the Medical College of Wisconsin. That means there is only one primary care doctor for every 3,000 to 3,500 people.”I knew that I wanted to come back to make a change to that,” Simpson said.”To seek out help, there’s so many barriers. There’s transportation barriers. There’s cultural barriers. There’s trust,” said Michael Levas, the Health Equity Scholars Program co-director.The students won’t just be working in the community, they’ll be living there too. Once construction is complete, Levas said the students can live in historic Bronzeville in the ThriveOn King building. The students also meet in the part-office space, part-residential ThriveOn King building for mental wellness workshops and other program-specific curriculum.”We’re going to train a portion, a cohort, of our students here to build those roots and build those connections,” Levas said. The Medical College of Wisconsin has philanthropic funding secured to bring in three new groups of students over the next three years, but by that time, Levas said, he is hoping to have secured a more permanent funding source for the program.