The Social Medicine Portal

Medical Students

• Research-based Health Activism Course: This is a unique course in research methods and health activism offered to medical students. For more details and program links, click here.
• Family Medicine Clerkship: 4 week required primary care experience for all third-year AECOM students.
• Family Medicine Sub-Internship at Montefiore Medical Center and Beth Israel Family Medicine. This program is open to all interested medical students (not just AECOM students). For more information, please follow this link.
• The DFSM also offers over 20 different elective experiences for any interested medical student. The listing of electives can be found at this link.

Residency Program in Social Medicine

• History: “Founded in 1970 to train physicians to practice in community health centers and underserved areas, the Residency Program in Social Medicine (RPSM) of Montefiore Medical Center, Bronx, New York, has graduated 562 board-eligible family physicians, general internists, and pediatricians whose careers fulfill this mission. The RPSM was a model for federal funding for primary care residency programs and has received Title VII grants during most of its history. The RPSM has tailored its mission and structured its curriculum to promote a community and population orientation and to provide the requisite knowledge and skills for integrating social medicine into clinical practice.” From a 2008 article in Academic Medicine entitled: The Residency Program in Social Medicine of Montefiore Medical Center: 37 Years of Mission-Driven, Interdisciplinary Training in Primary Care, Population Health, and Social Medicine.
• Social Medicine Curriculum: For a general roadmap to the three year social medicine curriculum at the RPSM, click on this Word Document.
  • Orientation Month is one of the core courses in the Social Medicine Month. For an article about the use of maps in the 2006 Orientation, follow this link to an edition Public Health Reports and the article: Using Google Earth as an Innovative Tool for Community Mapping or read our posting (with beautiful images of the Bronx).
• Social Medicine Rounds: These rounds are held twice a month and cover topics as diverse as hospital mergers and the health impact of war. Rounds occasionally occur outside of the hospital: in a Buddhist Temple, riding the “toxic bus tour” or visiting a community center. The schedule is available at this link. Postings about these rounds can also be found at this link.
• Social Medicine Projects: Residents in the Montefiore Residency Program in Social Medicine are required to produce a social medicine project in the course of their 3 year residency. These projects can involve community service, advocacy or research (and often a combination of all three). These projects are presented to the Department in the last Social Medicine Rounds before graduation in June. To read abstracts of the projects from the 2008 class, click this link.
• Training Sites
  • Comprehensive Health Care Center
  • Williamsbridge Family Practice
  • Family Health Center
• Social Pediatrics: The Residency Program in Social Pediatrics began at Montefiore in 1970. Our program is designed to train pediatricians who are interested in practicing medicine within underserved, disadvantaged communities. Since its inception the residency program has trained over 150 pediatricians, many who have gone on to leadership positions as advocates for impoverished children and families. Our residents are trained alongside residents in Montefiore’s categorical residency program¹. Inpatient training takes place within the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore. In addition to traditional didactics, residents in Social Pediatrics receive extensive training in the biopsychosocial aspects of medical care. They are exposed to a multi-disciplinary core curriculum. To read more, click this link.
• Social Internal Medicine
• Family Medicine
• Elective Courses offered at the RPSM (partial listing)
  • Liberation Medicine: Contact Dr. Lanny Smith
  • Global Health: Contact Dr. G. Paccione
  • The Bronx Regional Medicine-Public Health Education Center, offers an elective for residents in the areas of public health, population health, prevention, and the role of physicians in public health promotion; this is a collaboration between the RPSM, AECOM and the Bronx Office of the New York City Department of Health. In addition, the New York City DOH offers a separate elective in Public Health and Preventive Medicine for both medical students and residents.
    

• Want more information? We have created a bibliography of articles published about the RPSM.

Fellowship Programs

• Fellowship in Family Planning/Reproductive Health: A description of this fellowship can be found on the Department’s website at this link. Fellows receive training in clinical research, both qualitative and quantitative, develop clinical and teaching skills, have opportunities to work internationally, and connect to a rapidly expanding network of family planning experts. The Family Planning fellows meet weekly to discuss their research projects, prepare and practice presentations, work collaboratively on manuscripts, and discuss foundations of adult education in order to become excellent faculty teachers. They maintain an active practice in MMG2 clinical sites, where they work together with other family medicine faculty, residents, and students on rotation in our department. They train family doctors at other MMG sites in medical pregnancy termination.During the fellowship they also complete their MPH in the program at Columbia University. Each fellow is actively involved with developing and implementing at least one research project, and they have presented their findings at regional and national meetings. Several of the fellows have submitted manuscripts on these projects to peer-reviewed journals
• Disparities Scholars

Service-based Programs

School Health Program: The Montefiore School Health Program is the largest school-based health program of its kind in the country, with more than 13,000 children registered in 13 schools in the Bronx - five elementary, one K-8, two middle and five high schools.

Health Care for the Homeless Program

ECHO Free Clinic

Human Rights Clinic

Community Health Promoters

• Community Health Promoters Training Program for Bangladeshi Community: For more information, contact Dr. Alison Karasz

• OPEN-IT Clinic: The Montefiore CHCC is federally qualified health center in the Highbridge-Morrisania (HM) section of the South Bronx where 30% of the population is foreign born and 45% do not have a personal doctor. The CHCC established the OPEN-IT Clinic (Opportunities Pro-Immigrant Elderly Newcomers-International Travel) to provide culturally appropriate clinical services to immigrants, and educate resident physicians in immigration/travel medicine. The multiple barriers for HM residents to access available health care services include language, cultural differences, fear of retribution (for undocumented residents), and lack of knowledge regarding available services. To address these barriers, the CHW-OPEN-IT clinic collaboration recruited and trained Community Health Workers (CHWs). For more information contact: Angela Soto.

Centers

The Bronx Center to Reduce and Eliminate Ethnic and Racial Health Disparities (Bronx CREED)

Hispanic Center of Excellence (HCOE)

Departmental Journals

Departmental eReport

Social Medicine: An online, open-access journal: Started in 2006, Social Medicine is published in both English and Spanish. It is a collaboration between the DFSM and the Latin American Social Medicine Association (ALAMES). The journal is open-access and peer-reviewed. The Spanish version is available at www.medicinasocial.info. We welcome submissions.

Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine: From Editor-in-Chief Paul Gross: “While leafing through a medical journal some years ago, it struck me that the scientific studies that filled its pages bore only a slight resemblance to my experience of the practice of medicine. For one thing, the patients in the studies seemed to enjoy swallowing pills. They remembered to take them and didn’t seem to mind their accompanying side effects. (Many of my patients, by comparison, already had a dozen bottles cluttering their kitchen counters; a new pill that made them tired or queasy was the last thing they wanted.) ” Visit Pulse at: www.pulsemagazine.org.

Advocacy work

Legal Clinics (CHCC & FHC)

The South Bronx Environmental Justice Partnership: For information, visit their website.