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Community Medicine

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The Community Medicine (CM) program fuses social sciences with medicine. Emphasis is on understanding the biological, social, and psychological origins of health and the delivery of medical care.

The CM curriculum is launched at the end of the first year with a rotation for all interns, which also serves as an opportunity for them to reconnect after a dynamic year of training. For the following two years, residents carry out an individual longitudinal project in the community. Some recent projects have been offering health care information in a neighborhood Boys and Girls Club, providing the medical care at a small hospice, and creating a PDA database of all social services offered within walking distance of the FMC.

CM pairs the details of clinical practice with an exploration of the bigger social picture that influences health outcomes in a community. The goal is to produce Family Medicine physicians who are a blend of medical clinicians, social researchers, and advocates. The goal is improved health on a community scale.

To put "community" back into "medicine," we work with colleagues in Pediatrics, Medicine, Community and Preventive Medicine, Nursing, and other academic fields.

CM coursework, incorporated into the existing Family Medicine curriculum, includes these channels of learning:

  • Community organizing and outreach
  • Media advocacy: Letter-writing, op-ed pieces, interviews, and media relations
  • Health advocacy: Writing health policy reports, lobbying policy makers, and reaching political officials
  • Theories of social change
  • Epidemiology and biostatistics
  • Medical sociology and anthropology
  • Medical informatics and library science
  • Health policy and health services research
  • Health care organization and administration
  • Research study design
  • Comparative health systems
  • Time management skills

Mahatma Ghandi said,"You must be the change you want to see in the world." But to do that, medical doctors need an instruction manual. They need a map to explore and understand dimensions of health care that exist outside medical science. The Community Medicine program does that.