Archive for the 'Medical School Programs' Category
Add a comment December 15th, 2009 by bronxdoc
January 6th, 2010 will mark the beginning of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine student-run Social Medicine Course. This course is a unique opportunity for the Einstein students to cover “essentials of medical practice not taught in medical school.” This year’s list of speakers amply illustrates the connections between clinical practice and social activism.
The opening speaker will be Dr. Joia Mukerjee of Partners in Health who will discuss “Social Forces in Medicine.” This event will take place at 5:30 PM at the Riklis Auditorium and will be followed by a reception. Subsequent sessions will take place each Wednesday (with one exception) at the 5th floor Forchheimer Auditorium at 5;30PM. Dinner is provided. All events in this series will be listed at the top of our blog roll.
At last year’s course several local readers of the Social Medicine Portal dropped by. Please feel free to come, but write to Ms. Karp (see below) so that we can inform security.
The list of speakers and topics is as follows:
Jan 13 ∙ History of Social Medicine ∙ Matt Anderson, MD, MS.
Jan 20 ∙ LGBT Health and Community Organizing ∙ John-Paul Sanchez, MD, MPH
Jan 27 ∙ Race and Health in the Bronx ∙ Robert Fullilove, EdD
Feb 3 ∙ Harm Reduction in the Bronx: Dealing with the Hepatitis Epidemic among IV Drug Users ∙ Donald Davis
Feb 10 ∙ Motivational Interviewing and Nutrition in the Bronx ∙Yasmin Mossavar-Rahmani, PhD, RD, CDN
Feb 17 ∙ The Impact of Hep B on Pregnancy in the Asian American Community∙Tomoaki Kato, MD; Maya Gambarin-Gelwin, MD
Feb 24 ∙ Abortion Care in NYC∙Marji Gold, MD
Mar 3 ∙ Native American Health ∙ Donna Perry, MD *Price Center Auditorium
Mar 10 ∙ Separate and Unequal: Medical Apartheid ∙ Neil Calman, MD and Nisha Agarwal, JD
Mar 16* ∙ Liberation Medicine ∙Lanny Smith, MD, MPH, DTM&H *Tuesday at 7:15pm*
Mar 17 ∙ Reentry: Old Fears, New Hopes ∙Meekaelle Joseph
Mar 24 ∙ Street Medicine ∙ Jim Withers, MD
Apr 7 ∙ The History and Practice of Community Psychiatry ∙Thomas Betzler, MD
Apr 14 ∙ Nyaya Health: A Case Study in Developing a Healthcare NGO∙ Ryan Schwarz and Bijay Acharya, MD
Apr 21 ∙ Refugee and Asylee care: Human Rights for Torture Survivors ∙ Nicole Sirotin, MD
Apr 28 ∙ Ayurvedic Medicine ∙Bhaswati Bhattacharya, MD, PhD
May 5 ∙ The War on Women: Criminalization of Reproduction in the United States ∙Robert Roose, MD
For any questions or kosher meal requests, please contact Jessica Karp at jkarp@einstein.yu.edu.
Posted by Matt Anderson, MD
Add a comment October 7th, 2009 by bronxdoc
Social Medicine, our open-access, online academic journal has just published its latest issue. Here is a brief summary of the articles all of which are available for free at www.socialmedicine.info and www.medicinasocial.info (in Spanish).
Children in post-Civil War Nepal singing revoutionary songs
Special Theme: Social Medicine & War
For this special theme issue on Social Medicine & War, Dr. Vic Sidel served as guest editor. His lead editorial (co-authored with Dr. Barry Levy) examines the diversion of resources to war and the preparation for war.
Quoting from their introduction to the three original research articles about war, Drs. Sidel and Levy write: ”Dr. Andrea Angulo Menasse, a researcher from Mexico City’s Autonomous University, documents the very personal story of how the violence of the Spanish Civil War affected one family. In her case study the trauma suffered by Spanish Republicans is traced through three generations and crosses the Atlantic Ocean as the family moves is exiled in Mexico. Dr. Sachin Ghimire from the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health of the Jawaharlal Nehru University reports on his fieldwork in Rolpa, Nepal, the district from which the Nepal Civil War (also called the People’s War) originated in 1996. Based on 80 interviews, he documents the difficulties faced by health care workers as they negotiated the sometimes deadly task of remaining in communities where control alternated between Nepalese Special Forces and the Maoist rebels. Finally, Colombian researcher, Carlos Iván Pacheco Sánchez, from the University of Rosario in Bogota, brings an epidemiologist’s tools to examine the impact of the ongoing armed conflict in the border Department of Nariño. His discussion is informed by the current debate over health care in Colombia where a recent Constitutional Court decision has found that the current health care system violates the right to health.”
Closing the Gap: Where are we one year later
In August of 2009, the WHO’s Commission on the Social Determinants of Health issued a bold call to eliminate health disparities within a generation. Three articles in this issue look at what has – and has not – happened in the intervening year. Our second editorial examines the international response to the Commission’s call. José Carlos Escudero explores the meaning of the report for the WHO and underscores the report’s limitations. A detailed critique of the report, along with an alternative approach to addressing health inequities, is offered by Dr. Anne-Emanuelle Birn. Dr. Birn’s critique is especially important for offering important historical background by exploring how Europeans in the 19th century – notably Louis-René Villermé, Edwin Chadwick, and Friedrich Engels – each approached the social disparities that arose during the Industrial Revolution.
The Peckham Experiment
We are also very pleased to publish three classic texts describing the Peckham Experiment, an innovative community center built in England during the Depression. The Pioneer Health Center was designed around the idea of studying (and fostering) what makes people healthy, rather than what makes them sick. Imagine that!
Please visit the journal and explore the breadth, depth and scope of social medicine past and present. Along with some suggestions for the future.
posted by Matt Anderson, MD
3 Comments February 1st, 2009 by bronxdoc
Catlin Polley in Estancia
…Take a year out of med school between my third and fourth years?
…Delay residency for a year after graduation?
…Leave my practice as a physician or my retirement for a time?
In Estancia, El Salvador, a clinic in a remote, rural community needs you. To trek up mudslicked hillsides in the dusk to find a pregnant women who can´t move her limbs or a man in a hammock with a toothache run out-of-control. To think about and act upon the lack of latrines and the rampant childhood malnutrition. To face the health effects of rising food prices and strip mining projects, and to be called to speak out…
Come, work with Doctors for Global Health www.dghonline.org, a volunteer-run organization of health providers, teachers, psychologists, artists, and anyone with a mind for health, that seeks to foster a vision of Liberation Medicine through accompanying grass roots projects in Latin America and Uganda.
It is an amazing education in being a community physician, in public health, and the need for activism on the policy level. You will be challenged in your medical knowledge, but mostly in your personal sources of energy, motivation, courage, and strength. You will changed by people living in poverty who work for liberation.
For more info on this amazing international health opportunity, please visit the website for Doctors for Global Health, www.dghonline.org. If you want to talk about volunteering in Estancia or about what it’s like to break from the traditional course of medical education, feel free to contact us.
Current 4th year medical students from Baylor and Penn volunteering in Estancia, Morazan, El Salvador
Note: This posting was corrected on 2/14/2009. The original posting had a photo that was not from Estancia.
Add a comment January 2nd, 2009 by bronxdoc
This report by US medical student Joanna Mae Souers offers her perspective on the recent Medical Education Conference in Havana.
November 30th 2008, commenced the 4-day conference, “Medical Education for the 21st Century: Teaching for Health Equity,” at the National Hotel of Cuba. The conference brought together health professionals, educators, administrators and researchers from around the world to exchange the latest in socially “accountable” health education.
The opening night included an inaugural address by Dr. Roberto Gonzalez, the Vice Minister of Public Health in Cuba, and a lecture by Dr. Charles Boelen, an international consultant on health care and ex-coordinator of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Program for Human Resources.
The turnout was impressive with 230 presenters from 29 different countries including Cuba, the Philippines, the United States, Canada, Belgium, Honduras, Chile, Ethiopia, Columbia, Iran, Egypt, Ecuador, Argentina, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, Spain, Great Britain, Greece, Germany, Ecuador, Belgium, Switzerland, Puerto Rico, Hungary, Tanzania, Australia, Pakistan, and New Zealand.
I was amazed that 54 of the 230 presenters came from the United States, representing a plethora of institutions including the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC), UCSF-UC Berkley, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Boston University, The Jay Weiss Center for Social Medicine and Health Equity of the Leonard Miller School of Medicine, George Washington University, the University of Wisconsin, and the list goes on.
As representative students of the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM), we were very pleased to be invited as guests of the non-profit organization, MEDICC (Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba). MEDICC, one of the many sponsors, has worked closely with Cuba over the years to bring awareness to the international community the highly qualified human resources they have developed to meet the needs of the Cuban people and others around the world.
It was a wonderful opportunity for students to meet and share their experience with health care educators from around the world. Educators were mostly impressed with the student’s humanistic ideals and their well-established set stride ahead of the curve on Social Health Care.
Most of the U.S. students chose the Latin American School of Medicine not only as their first choice, but they chose it as their only choice for the program’s social, humanistic and altruistic ideals embedded in its history and carried out in its curriculum.
As a student of the Latin American School of Medicine, I am proud to represent Cuba’s thought provoking, innovative ways of approaching health education in the 21st Century. It was amazing to see so many people come together to share their ideas and show an interest in our experience. I hope that people will be further inspired to mark their experience with positive thinking and practical change.
Joanna Mae Souers
Escuela LatinoAmericana de Medicina
Carretera Panamericana
KM 3,5
Santa Fe, Playa
Ciudad de la Habana, CUBA
CP 19108
jsouers@gmail.com <mailto:jsouers@gmail.com>
1 Comment December 10th, 2008 by bronxdoc
Students represent their country at ELAM
Last week, Havana’s Hotel Nacional was the setting for the Medical Education for the 21st Century conference (see our posting of May 11, 2008). Among the groups participating in this conference were PAHO, ALAMES, the Global Health Education Consortium (GHEC), MEDICC and the Cuban Ministry of Public Health.
There were a fair number of US citizens at the conference and we are fortunate that US Pediatrician David Keller (of UMass Medical School) has posted a day-by-day description of the conference (along with a few pictures) on his blog Rosie D and Me. He notes: “The conference is fabulous and oversubscribed (> 700 attendees), but the facility is not perfectly designed for such a number. So it is sometimes a little crowded; they didn’t make arrangements for such a number to tour hospitals and the medical school, and I was unable to get my name on the proper list to have that opportunity. Still, the atmosphere is electric. People from all over the world (I heard 22 countries, but I have no official word on who is here) are gathered to discuss the complexity of integrating social medicine (for want of a better word) into the lexicon of medical education. Each country faces challenges consistent with the way in which their health care system is designed.”
Another participant in the conference, my colleague Sherenne Simon, has posted photos of Cuba and the conference on Picasa.
One of the benefits of having US attendees in Havana was that they go to meet with the US students studying at the Latin American School of Medicine (see our posting Studying Medicine in Cuba: The Experience of Two US Students). Figuring out how to support these students in their transition back to the United States is a challenge. Medical education in Cuba is quite different from the US. However, as a group, the ELAM (Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina) students seem highly motivated (who else would spend six years living as scholarship student in Cuba?), speak Spanish, and have a commitment to work in under-served areas on their return to the US. In some ways, they are ideal residency candidates for a US health care system that struggles to provide clinicians to many underserved communities.
One of the ELAM students provided us with a link to letters that student Ramon Alejandro Bernal has been sending back to his hometown Seattle. These are available at the website of Western Washington PNHP. ELAM has its own publication, Panorama: Cuba y Salud available at www.panorama.sld.cu. Articles have abstracts in English.
Any readers that might be interested in helping the US ELAM students out, can contact me. Their main interest is in finding clinical placements in the US during their summer breaks.
Finally, the keynote address was given by Dr. Charles Boelen, of the WHO’s Human Resources for Health Department: Entitled “Social Accountability: Medical Education’s Boldest Challenge” Dr. Boelen notes: “Until recently, the prevailing assumption was that community orientation and posting, along with problem-based learning, were adequate for medical schools to serve social needs. But now, this notion of social accountability has emerged, meriting attention worldwide, even within traditional medical circles. This concept urges medical schools to go beyond pedagogical innovations and search for optimal integration of their graduates into health systems.” This paper was published in the most recent edition of MEDICC Review which has several excellent articles on international experience in Teaching for Health Equity.
posted by: Matt Anderson, MD
3 Comments October 8th, 2008 by bronxdoc
[Correction: The day of action on 11/7/1008 has been canceled. See the comment section for another upcoming Rock Dove event.]
The Rock Dove Collective, a “radical community health exchange” is organizing a day of action on 11/7/2008 to find free and low cost health clinics in New York City. The development of a comprehensive list of such clinics – available on the web – would be a great resource.
The NYC Department of Health has free clinics available for STD screening and treatment, dental care, as well as for the treatment of tuberculosis. [In our opinion the City's chest clinics provide the best TB care in New York.] Unfortunately the link to the list of all DOH clinics is down. Calling 311 might be a good place to start to see if a clinic is available for a specific problem.
There are at least three student run free clinics in the city. The Institute for Urban Family Health runs two. The ECHO clinic in the Bronx was the first medical student free clinic, set up by students at AECOM. The New York City Free Clinic in Manhattan is a project of NYU medical students In addtition, students at SUNY/Downstate have organized the Brooklyn Free Clinic.
New York City also has an extensive network of Community Health Centers which provide low cost care to people without insurance.
Free clinics are not the solution to our healthcare problems, indeed they are a symptom of the problem. And yet they also point to what might be the ethos of a national health system devoted not to profit, but to health. I would be happy for interested readers to post additional resources.
What follows is the Rock Dove announcement:
Rock Dove Day of Action!!
Health Clinics for Community Healing
Friday November 7th
10:30am – 4:00pm
Your friendly neighborhood Rock Dove Collective is calling our second Day of Action! On Friday, November 7th, volunteers will fan out across the city, visiting free and low cost health clinics and gathering information about their services from both the staff and the clients who are there receiving services. Our goal is to use this information to create comprehensive profiles of health clinics in NYC, as part of our ongoing effort to make free and low cost health services accessible to those in need.
We will meet up in downtown Manhattan at 10:30am, at a location TBA. Over breakfast and icebreakers, volunteers will receive their travel plans for the day as well as a quick training on how to gather information when visiting a clinic. Volunteers will go out in pairs and hit up 1-2 clinics before we all meet up at 4pm to decompress, share information, eat, drink, and be merry!
How to Contribute:
-Volunteer! Bring your friends! Join us as we hoof it through NYC in search of comprehensive information about free and low cost health services. If you plan on volunteering, RSVP to Freya at freyapowell@gmail.com.
-Donate! If you can’t join us the day of, please donate food and/or cash so that we can feed our volunteers breakfast and snacks, and help them
Posted by Matt Anderson
Add a comment July 14th, 2008 by bronxdoc
Last Tuesday (7/8/2008) brought Dr. Jonathan Tobin from Yeshiva University’s Institute for Public Health Sciences to Social Medicine Rounds. He came to lead a showing and discussion of the PBS documentary Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick? Dr. Tobin is well-known in the public health community for his work as head of the Clinical Directors Network, Inc (CDN). CDN is a “not-for-profit network that supports community-based health centers, including their patients, practitioners and organizations.” The CDN website is full of clinical resources relevant to the work of Community Health Centers in the US.
Dr. Tobin’s visit was an opportunity for us to learn something about Yeshiva’s Institute for Public Health Sciences. The Institute is currently awaiting certification from New York State to offer a Master’s level degree in Public Health as well as a Certification of Public Health training. At the present time they are sponsoring educational activities, which have included a public health grand rounds series and a 14-session course on public health approaches to obesity. In September of 2007, they hosted a two day conference on Diversity & Disparity in Health and they are interested in forming academic think-tanks to look at particular health problems in a multi-disciplinary way. These activities are all posted on their website.
5 Comments June 24th, 2008 by bronxdoc
We wanted to share an article we just published in Public Health Reports on using Google Earth for community mapping. We have found Google Earth a very useful tool that allows non-experts to make maps illustrating the community context for health problems. This post contains two of the maps created by our residents and medical students.
Using Google Earth as an Innovative Tool for Community Mapping
SYNOPSIS
Maps are used to track diseases and illustrate the social context of health problems. However, commercial mapping software requires special training. This article illustrates how nonspecialists used Google EarthTM, a free program, to create community maps. The Bronx, New York, is characterized by high levels of obesity and diabetes. Residents and medical students measured the variety and quality of food and exercise sources around a residency training clinic and a student-run free clinic, using Google Earth to create maps with minimal assistance. Locations were identified using street addresses or simply by pointing to them on a map. Maps can be shared via e-mail, viewed online with Google Earth or Google Maps, and the data can be incorporated into other mapping software.
Authors: Theodore B. Lefer, Matthew R. Anderson, Alice Fornari, Anastasia Lambert, Jason Fletcher and Maria Baquero
Source: Public Health Reports, July-August 2008, 123: 474-480, Available at www.publichealthreports.org
Sources of Food and Exercise around the Montefiore Comprehensive Health Care Center; Legend: Red cross = Comprehensive Health Care Center; Grocery cart = Grocery Store (n =10); Fork and Knife = Restaurants (n=16); Red dot = Fast Food outlet (n=32); Yellow dot = Bodegas (small variety stores, n=44); Green tree = Exercise site (n=11). Note the old Yankee stadium on the lower left of the map.
Food stores around ECHO Free Clinic, ranked by variety and quality of produce for sale; Legend: Red Cross = ECHO Free Clinic; Small red icon of shopping cart = “no variety” (n=33) ; Yellow cart = “Poor variety” (n=67); Blue cart = “Limited variety” (n=50); Darker green cart = “Better variety” (n=11); Larger, lighter green cart = “Good variety” (n=15) ; Blue -shaded area = Study area
If you are interested, you can also download the original KMZ file.
posted by: Matt Anderson
Add a comment May 10th, 2008 by bronxdoc
School of Social Medicine Genogram and Next Generation Medical Education
When Merle Cunningham MD came to visit the School of Osteopathic Medicine in Arizona (SOMA) the other day, the topic got around to the merger of two fine family lines. Merle has been active in Community Health Centers, NACHC, the National Health Service Corps, and health care access in NYC. He has been instrumental working through NACHC and Gary Cloud to help make SOMA a reality.
Forrest Lang MD was the second family line. He took his Social Medicine training to NHSC, Appalachia, East Tennesee State, and the Appalachian Preceptorship. I have the honor of being his adopted mentee. He brought me to TN and helped me to develop the ETSU Rural Fellowship, the Minifellowship, the Rural High School Career Fair, and the initial work toward the Mountain City rural site. One of the Rural Minifellows, faculty that were developing rural programs, was Tom McWilliams DO. His rural program for the Minifellowship was the revision of the Kirksville family practice preceptorship. Much “Social Medicine” type collaboration was involved in the Rural Minifellowship.
Tom McWilliams moved on to develop the first osteopathic school in Arizona at AZCOM and then the new ATSU SOMA, working back with the Kirksville folks. The preferential admissions process used was borrowed from my work which was borrowed from the various interactions with the Rural Minifellows. Tom hired me, Forrest Lang’s mentee, to come to Arizona to help develop this new school. Tom also shares NHSC background and helped recruit Barb Doty who helped found the Alaska FP training program that has top rates of underserved graduates in CHC And Native Consortia practice locations (about 43%). The Minifellowship, like the School of Social Medicine, helped keep ideals and ideas alive to translate them into action.
The School of Osteopathic Medicine of Arizona works with CHCs to funnel in applicants familiar with work with the underserved. SOMA admits medical students with a top priority on service orientation. The top priority is a match to the mission of returning them to CHC locations as long term primary care physicians. After one year at Mesa AZ, the medical students depart Mesa for sites from Hawaii to Brooklyn. The first class will begin in Brooklyn at Sunset Park in a few months. One of the faculty hired here at the same time was a lab tech at Sunset Park, Noel Carrasco, MD. who later did research, U Autonoma De Guadalajara, Neonatology, and Complementary and Alternative work with Andrew Weil.
Just wanted you to know that some epidemics are worth spreading and the School of Social Medicine is one of the best vectors.
When the new medical students arrive at Sunset Park, might just be worth “completing” their training where it began.
Robert C. Bowman, M.D.
rcbowman@atsu.edu
