Community and Population Health

This Division supports a wide range of projects that bear on medicine as a social enterprise and have as an over-arching goal, improving the health of the public. These projects may be targeted at the level of disadvantaged or underserved communities and larger populations at domestic or international sites. They may or may not have a research focus, but if they do, they are probably eligible for fellowship support (see under Project Fellowships and Programs Directory).

Community-based projects are usually conducted by first and second year students outside of class hours on a purely voluntary basis and without fellowship funding. Participation in such activities does much to nurture the spirit of volunteerism and promote appreciation for the social roles and responsibilities of practicing physicians. Most of these projects are sponsored by Einstein chapters of national student organizations such as the American Medical Student Association, AMA-Medical Student Section, Student National Medical Association, Boricua/Latino Health Association and Asian Pacific American Medical Student Association. With the provision of travel awards, Einstein students are especially well represented at regional and national meetings of these organizations, and many have been elected to leadership positions.

Examples of community-based projects are the Einstein Hepatitis B Vaccination Project, Einstein Youth Violence Project, Reach Out and Read and the Einstein Community Health Outreach (ECHO). The latter takes place at a free health clinic in which students at all levels of their education have the opportunity to see and assist patients as part of an attending supervised medical team. The clinic provides a unique opportunity for students to see and deal with the challenges encountered by patients and health care providers in an economically disadvantaged neighborhood. For additional information about ECHO, visit http://www.echoclinic.org.

For the past several years, the Einstein student branch of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) has sponsored and organized an elective course in Social Medicine. Consisting of about a dozen lectures delivered by Einstein faculty and invited speakers, the course aims to inform students about current issues in medical ethics, health economics, health policy and various other topics dealing with health and disease from a socio-economic perspective. For additional information about social medicine, health activism and community health, visit http://www.socialmedicine.org.

For advice about arranging and designing research projects in the Division of Community and Population Health, see Dr. William Burton, 206 - Belfer or contact him via e-Mail burton@aecom.yu.edu.