Good thing Dr. Laura Mayans is a quick study. Four years after becoming a family physician, she's now in charge of giving students at the KU School of Medicine-Wichita their first immersion into that specialty.

"It's a steep learning curve, but I'm catching on," she says of her move into medical education. "I like it." Mayans is director of the school's family medicine clerkship, which sends third-year students to train with family physicians throughout the Wichita area for eight weeks at a time. With a smile as sunny as the light shining through her third-floor office window, she's a good choice to connect aspiring physicians with practicing ones. Drs. Rick Kellerman and Scott Moser get the credit for recruiting their former student to join the faculty.  

"They apparently had the grand plan of me coming back before I had the grand plan," Mayans said.  

A Wichita native, Mayans says her interest in medicine was first piqued when her father suffered a serious leg injury. A half-dozen surgeries were required to give him back its use.  

"I always admired the doctors," said Mayans, who was nine when the accident happened. "I loved seeing all the charts and bones and it got me interested in the human body."  

Into "science-y stuff" growing up, and an animal lover, Mayans was torn between becoming a veterinarian or a physician until college. She earned her medical degree from the KU School of Medicine-Wichita in 2008. She completed her family medicine residency in North Carolina while her husband, Dr. David Mayans, did the same with his specialty, neurology. David is also a Wichita native, although the two didn't meet until medical school.  

Mayans worked in a private practice in North Carolina for two years. Mayans said they always planned to return to Wichita, and when they did in 2013, KU offered her a job as the assistant clerkship director. She took over as director this year.  

A big part of Mayans' job is recruiting volunteer preceptors from among the community's family physicians. "A lot of them are hesitant," she said, wondering how they can fit teaching students into already busy schedules. But, she added, "Nearly all of them really enjoy it after we talk them into it."  

"I feel like I'm giving both the students and preceptors something," she said. "The docs get to interact with students who are excited and it reminds them this is why they went into medicine in the first place."

Before sending the students out, Mayans delivers an orientation lecture. At the end, she grades them. In between, she offers "extra and outside help" to any students who need it, whether it's in the area of academics or personal issues.  

Mayans sees her own patients at the Wesley Family Medicine clinic two half-days a week and supervises residents there another half-day. Additionally, she is conducting research into child obesity as the capstone of her thesis for a Masters of Public Health degree from the Wichita campus. Acting on an idea suggested by a colleague, Mayans designed and is overseeing a project called "F.A.ST. Visits," referring to how much food, activity, and screen time obese children have in their lives.  

As part of the project, physicians and residents at the clinic are offering parents of obese children information on ways to improve their children's health. Mayans says obesity is often an uncomfortable subject for medical providers to bring up and parents to discuss. F.A.ST. Visits are designed to give those providers the tools and confidence they need to help interested parents with strategies for addressing obesity. Mayans' research is focused less on measuring actual weight loss -- children are going to put on weight as they grow whether obese or not -- and more on measuring whether the physicians, residents, and parents feel like they are better equipped to deal with the issue at the end of the study.  

With so many once-potentially serious childhood diseases under control, she said, pediatric obesity has emerged as one of medicine's biggest challenges.  

"They're setting themselves up to be much less healthy adults," Mayans said. "If you can change their habits now, it's so much easier than when they're in their twenties."