Practicing rural medicine is in Jennifer Bacani McKenney’s blood.

In 2009, the University of Kansas School of Medicine graduate joined her father’s medical practice in Fredonia, Kansas (pop: 2,482), the same rural community where she was born 30 years earlier.

McKenney remembers as a girl spending her afternoons after school helping out in her father’s medical office, where her mother was the office manager. She loved watching her dad practice medicine and observing the great relationships he had with his patients.

“As long as I can remember, I knew I wanted to be a doctor and to practice family medicine,” Bacani Kennedy said. “But when I was going to medical school at KU, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back and practice in a small town.”

Bacani McKenney said she changed her mind when the hospital in Fredonia ― where her father still worked ― began recruiting her while she was serving her residency in Wichita, Kansas. The hospital offered to repay her medical school loans if she came back home to practice, and the chance to work with her father was appealing. So, after her residency, Bacani McKenney and her husband moved back to Fredonia. It’s a decision she has never regretted.

“The best way to describe it that no other place will love me as much as the people of Fredonia do,” Bacani McKenney said. “Everyone knows my two kids. They aren’t just my patients. They treat me like family.”

Bacani McKenney, who was named Rural Health Practitioner of the Year by the National Rural Health Association in 2021, often speaks to medical students about the rewards of practicing in rural areas of the country.

“If medical students knew how rewarding rural practice can be, they would give it more consideration,” she said. “You can ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT make such a big difference. Not only am I the town’s doctor, I’m the school board president and the Wilson County health director, and my husband is the mayor. This town means everything to us.”

Bacani McKenney said one of the things she is most proud of is starting a medical academy for high school students in Fredonia.

“We talk to them about the opportunities for health care careers,” she said. “We have field trips and hospital visits where the students can see what doctors, nurses and health care workers do. And, of course, we encourage them to stay right here in their hometown.”

Bacani McKenney said she will always be grateful for the education and experience she had at the KU School of Medicine.

“I’m a Kansan through and through and to be able to go to the KU School of Medicine was everything I could hope for,” Bacani McKenney said. “My heart has always been with Kansas and KU.”