In July, as cicadas echoed through the mountain villages of Enshi Tujia and Miao autonomous prefecture, Hubei province, 20-year-old Wu Yutong followed a village doctor along winding paths to visit local residents. As she met elderly villagers, she felt an unexpected sense of familiarity.
"Their accents sound very similar to those in my hometown, so I feel like I am seeing my own grandparents," Wu said.
Wu, a clinical medicine student at Taikang Medical School (School of Basic Medical Sciences) of Wuhan University (WHU), was among 17 students who traveled to Baiguoshu village to study rural healthcare and provide health education to elderly residents and children.
The visit was part of a tradition stretching back nearly a decade. Since July 2017, when the school's first group of 19 students established a volunteer health service base in the village, successive groups of medical students have returned to continue the work.
Wei Lei, a professor at the school and the team's instructor, was leading the program for the fourth time. The program included undergraduates studying clinical medicine, stomatology and public health. Wei said serving rural communities allows students to understand what it means to be a medical worker in ways textbooks alone cannot.
Over the years, the initiative has expanded from basic health checks to chronic disease follow-ups and research on local disease prevention. This year, the students turned their attention to how digital technology is changing access to healthcare in rural areas.
Focusing on the digital empowerment of primary-level healthcare, the team conducted research in Baiguoshu and seven surrounding villages, visiting hospitals, health centers, village clinics and residents' homes to examine the use of digital medical services at different levels of the healthcare system.
For team leader Li Wen, 20, the fieldwork revealed a gap between technological progress and accessibility. Questionnaires showed that many residents over 65 struggled to use smartphones or self-service registration machines when making medical appointments.
The students discussed their findings with local health authorities and proposed placing illustrated guides beside registration machines to help elderly patients better understand how to use them.
"It may not be solved overnight, but through sustained efforts, we can make progress little by little," Li said.
But the program's impact is not measured only in research findings and proposals. Years of repeated visits have also brought tangible changes to villagers' lives.
Wu recalled the case of a villager named Long Fubing. In 2024, the team discovered during a medical consultation that Long had severe hypertension and began monitoring his condition. When Wu met him again this year, she found that his health had improved significantly. He was taking medication regularly and no longer stopped treatment without consulting doctors.
"Standing there, I felt I was seeing the results of years of work by previous teams," Wu said.
Long's experience reflects broader changes across the village. In 2017, 45.7 percent of residents had fallen into poverty because of illness, while only 2.49 percent put health knowledge into practice in daily life. By 2025, 87.5 percent of surveyed villagers were receiving regular checkups, and all surveyed patients with chronic diseases were taking medication as advised.
"These figures show that an important idea has gradually taken root among villagers — health should be managed proactively rather than addressed only after illness occurs," Wu said. "This is the most valuable achievement of the past 10 years."
A decade of visits has brought more than medical services to Baiguoshu — it has also forged a lasting bond between the students, villagers and younger generations.
That bond was clear to Ning Zhenghao, 22, a basic medicine student who led the team in 2025. Although many villagers were meeting him for the first time, they immediately recognized the WHU T-shirts worn by the students.
"They told me that our team's story had even been recorded in the village archives," Ning said.
Ning and his teammates also gave health education classes at Baiguoshu village primary school, where he was encouraged by the children's enthusiasm for learning and their grasp of basic health concepts.
"Every health education class we give plants a seed in children's minds — an awareness of the importance of caring for their health," Ning said. "Perhaps one day, some of them may enter the medical field and use their knowledge to improve healthcare in their hometown."
Li Bo contributed to this story.
