Empowering communities through experiential learning: the 'Enhance' program in Leadership and Social Medicine.

INTRODUCTION: Social determinants of health cause disparities in health and life expectancy in the UK1, especially in rural populations. Communities must be empowered to control their health2, alongside clinicians being more generalist and holistic. Health Education East Midlands is pioneering this approach, creating the 'Enhance' program. From August 2022, up to 12 Internal Medicine Trainees (IMT) will start the 'Enhance' program. They will spend 1 day per week learning about social inequalities, advocacy, and public health, before undertaking experiential learning with a community partner, working together to create and implement a Quality Improvement (QI) project. This will integrate trainees into communities, and help communities utilise assets to create sustainable changes. This longitudinal program will span over all 3 years of IMT. METHODS: After conducting a detailed literature search into experiential learning and service learning programs in medical education, virtual interviews were held with researchers worldwide to discuss how they created, implemented, and evaluated similar projects. The curriculum was created using Health Education England's 'Enhance' handbook, the IMT curriculum, and relevant literature. The teaching program was created with a Public Health specialist. RESULTS: The program commences in August 2022. Evaluation will commence thereafter. DISCUSSION: This will be the first experiential learning program of this scale in UK Postgraduate medical education, with future expansion focusing specifically on rural communities. Afterwards, trainees will understand the social determinants of health, health policy creation, medical advocacy, leadership, and research including asset-based assessments and QI. Trainees will be more holistic and generalist, working with and empowering their local communities. Future work will evaluate the program after commencement.References1 Marmot M, Allen J, Boyce T, Goldblatt P, Morrison J. Health equity in England: the Marmot Review ten years on. London: Institute of Health Equity, 2020. Available at https://www.health.org.uk/publications/reports/the-marmot-review-10-years-on2 Hixon AL, Yamada S, Farmer PE, Maskarinec, GG. Social justice: the heart of medical education. Social Medicine 2013; 3(7): 161-168. Available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258353708_Social_Justice_The_Heart_of_Medical_Education.

Addressing the health advocate role in medical education.

The health advocate role is an essential and underappreciated component of the CanMEDs competency framework. It is tied to the concept of social accountability and its application to medical schools for preparing future physicians who will work to ensure an equitable healthcare system. Student involvement in health advocacy throughout medical school can inspire a long-term commitment to address health disparities. The Social Medicine Network (SMN) provides an online platform for medical trainees to seek opportunities to address health disparities, with the goal of bridging the gap between the social determinants of health and clinical medicine. This online platform provides a list of health advocacy related opportunities for addressing issues that impede health equity, whether through research, community engagement, or clinical care.First implemented at the University of British Columbia, the SMN has since expanded to other medical schools across Canada. At the University of Ottawa, the SMN is being used to augment didactic teachings of health advocacy and social accountability. This article reports on the development and application of the SMN as a resource for medical trainees seeking meaningful and actionable opportunities to enact their role as health advocates.

Injury prevention class exercise: three-pronged list making.

It is difficult to find classroom exercises that have been specifically designed for injury prevention students. The suggested list-making classroom exercise forces students to recognise and devise many policy and programmatic options over and above the ones that normally spring to mind. Most important, it helps give students a better understanding of what is meant by, and the potential usefulness of, the public health approach to injury prevention.

[The career of medical public health specialists graduated from the French public health medical residency]. / La carrière des médecins spécialistes de santé publique et médecine sociale titulaires du diplôme d'études spécialisées.

BACKGROUND: The French public health medical residency was created in 1984 to train medical public health specialists. Knowledge was lacking on the career of the trained practitioners, with the sole study dating from 1995. In this study, the French national association of medical public health residents aimed to describe the training and career of all medical public health specialists since the inception of the residency. METHODS: An online survey took place during the first semester of 2012 to collect information on all medical public health specialists graduated from the French public health medical residency. Descriptive analysis of the collected information was performed. RESULTS: Replies from 563 graduated medical public health residents were collected from all over the country and years since the inception of the training. Ninety-eight percent of the informants were in activity. They mostly worked in public healthcare facilities (56%) and public administration (16%). Their main areas of practice were: epidemiology, clinical research, biostatistics (37%); health management information system (19%); health policy (14%). Eighty-eight percent of the respondents held a master degree, 29% a PhD. Practical training during the medical residency was deemed as very useful or needed by 73% of the informants, theoretical training by 43%. Sixty-eight percent of informants were very or fully satisfied by their carrier, 29% rather satisfied. CONCLUSION: This is the first study to achieve coverage of more than 45% of all medical public health specialists graduated since the inception of the public health medical residency. Full employment, wide-range activities, evolving carriers can explain the high satisfaction rates. The public health medical residency being the main access point to the public health medical specialty, the impact of the initial training on the career should lead to rethink the design of the public health medical residency to fulfil the needs in the public health sector.

[Benefits of the Curriculum "Social Medicine for the Rehabilitation Team" in Rehabilitation Practise]. / Nutzen des Curriculums "Sozialmedizinische Leistungsbeurteilung im Reha-Team" für die Rehabilitationspraxis.

The Federal German Pension Insurance in cooperation with professional organisations developed a curriculum for further socio-medical education of psychologists/psychotherapists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, sports therapists and social workers/social pedagogues involved in medical rehabilitation. This curriculum aims to improve the professional competence of the therapeutic groups named above with regards to their contributions to the socio-medical capacity evaluation and related communication within the rehabilitation team. The curriculum was implemented for the first time in 2013. Using the results of the usibility evaluation the continued education concept was revised and manualised. The manual allows for a wide dissemination of the education concept.

[Design of a Curriculum Clinical Social Medicine]. / Entwurf eines Curriculums Klinische Sozialmedizin.

The economic transformation of health care systems, which is supported by both the economic and the political sector, is in demand of constant humane correction. Legal regulations of social systems securing health corresponding to the code of social law are guard rails for a responsible use of limited resources and are subject to constant development. All doctors caring for patients should be in a position to reflect the real life context of their patients as both causal and modifying influence for health and disease from a social medical perspective, apart from their specific medical field of expertise.Accordingly 3 parts of sub-specialization training are suggested: clinical tasks of social medicine as detailed in the code of social law, clinical social medicine in health care according to the 5(th) book of the code of social law and social medicine in clinical social medicine/participation. Higher level-of-care hospitals, as well as rehabilitation clinics, should offer sub-specialization in social medicine without interruption of employment contracts. Corresponding criteria for the regulation on further education should be formulated by the German Society of Social Medicine and Prevention (DGSMP) as the competent scientific association and presented to the committee on further education of the Federal Medical Association. This aims at strengthening social medicine in clinical care.

Reducing health disparities: the social role of medical schools.

INTRODUCTION: Medical education based on the principles of social medicine can contribute toward reducing health disparities through the "creation" of doctors who are more involved in community programs. PURPOSE: This study compared the social medicine orientation of graduates from various medical schools in Israel. METHODS: The authors conducted an online cross-sectional survey in May 2011 among physicians who are graduates of Israeli medical schools. RESULTS: The study included 1050 physicians practicing medicine in Israel: 36% who are graduates from the Hebrew University, 26% from Tel Aviv University, 22% from the Technion and 16% from Ben-Gurion University. A greater percentage of physicians who studied either at the Technion or Ben-Gurion are working or have worked in the periphery (∼50% vs. ∼30% at the Hebrew and Tel Aviv Universities). Among Ben-Gurion graduates, 47% are active in social medicine programs vs. 34-38% from other schools. Among physicians active in social medicine programs, 32% of Ben-Gurion alumni estimated that their medical education greatly influenced their social medicine involvement vs. 8-15% from other schools. Hebrew University alumni described their studies as more research-oriented. In contrast, Ben-Gurion graduates described their studies as more social medicine-oriented and they exhibited more positive attitudes about the role of physicians in reducing health disparities. DISCUSSION: Social medicine-oriented medical education induces a socialization process reinforcing human values regarding doctor-patient relationships and produces positive attitudes among future doctors about social involvement. Findings emphasize the need to develop educational programs with this orientation and to strengthen medical schools in the periphery.

RISE-EM: Resident Instruction in Social Emergency Medicine, a Cohort Study of a Novel Curriculum.

There is recognition in the field of emergency medicine (EM) that social determinants of health (SDoH) are key drivers of patient care outcomes. Leaders in EM are calling for curricula integrating SDoH assessment and intervention, public health, and multidisciplinary approaches to EM care throughout medical school and residency. This intersection of SDoH and the emergency care system is known as social emergency medicine (SEM). Currently, there are few resources available for EM training programs to integrate this content; as a result, few EM trainees receive adequate education in SEM. To address this gap, we developed a four-part training in SEM tailored to EM residency programs and medical schools. This curriculum, known as RISE-EM (Resident Instruction in Social Emergency Medicine), uses video lectures, case examples, and group discussions to engage trainees and develop competency in providing sound care that is grounded in evidence-based principles of SEM. In the current study, we tested RISE-EM by delivering the video lectures to residents and medical students in two training programs. We administered pre- and post-course knowledge tests and a post-course participant attitudes survey to assess the acceptability and potential efficacy of the program for improving SEM knowledge and attitudes among EM learners. We found it to be both feasible and acceptable to introduce SEM content in residency conferences, with preliminary data showing statistically significant improvement in knowledge of the content and self-efficacy to apply it to their clinical practice. In summary, RISE-EM has been highly valued by EM learners and viewed as a strong supplement to their existing training, and it has been shown to successfully improve SEM knowledge and attitudes.

[(Inter)national and regional health goals in academic social-medical education conception for teaching medical students at the Eberhard Karls University Tuebingen]. / (Inter)nationale und regionale Gesundheitsziele in der sozialmedizinischen LehreLehrkonzeption für Medizinstudierende an der Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen.

BACKGROUND: Social medicine deals with the specific interactions between medicine and society within a constantly changing social environment. The Institute of Occupational and Social Medicine, University Hospital Tuebingen, focuses on this relationship within the academic teaching of the Medical Faculty. Many of the issues thus directly affect the national health objectives and especially the health targets of the state of Baden-Württemberg, summarised in the Health Strategy Baden-Wuerttemberg. MATERIAL AND METHODS: In addition to the recommendations of the German Society for Social Medicine and Prevention (DGSMP) for the social medicine curriculum and the specific definition of the content by the Tuebingen medical faculty, national and regional health-care goals are also taken into account in the teaching conception. RESULTS: Classes are increasingly offered as training courses in small groups (seminars, group work with practical training), instead of classic lectures. These teaching methods allow the students to take part more actively in social medicine issues and to think and act within a comprehensive understanding of health management based on societal goals and the needs of a good health system. The concept is supported by the curriculum design element "log-book skills" of the Medical Faculty of Tuebingen. Feedback elements for teachers and students shape the further development of the concept. In dealing with real system data, practical experience on site and case vignettes, the students experience the links between societal influences, political objectives and medical action as well as the importance of accessibility of medical services for equity in health chances. CONCLUSIONS: The fact that advice and expertise play a crucial role in accessibility is a component to which too little attention is paid and calls for emphasis in the teaching concept. This teaching approach will deepen the understanding of the influence of psychosocial context factors and the conditions of the structural framework on the medical outcome. Furthermore there is a need for providing knowledge and special skills, which enable medical doctors to guide their patients optimally within the healthcare system and to make their contribution to a good system.

Learning social medicine in the Bronx: an orientation for primary care residents.

BACKGROUND: Primary care educators face the challenge of teaching the social context of health and disease to clinicians. DESCRIPTION: Since 1975, the Residency Program in Social Medicine has trained clinicians to practice in urban underserved communities. During Orientation Month, 1st-year residents are relieved of inpatient duties and participate in learning activities addressing social and cultural aspects of health. Learning objectives include understanding patients' social context, their community, and the role of physicians as professionals. Recent innovations include incorporating an overall theme, weekly case studies, "triple jump" exercises, community mapping projects, patient-led community tours, and theme-specific visits to community institutions (e.g., prisons). EVALUATION: Residents complete weekly formative evaluations, a summative evaluation, and narrative reflections. Faculty complete an evaluative questionnaire. CONCLUSIONS: Orientation is a highly rated and valued part of our curriculum. Its success derives from ongoing curricular innovation and evolution, a departmental commitment to social medicine, and positive community response to our learners' interest and energy.

[Social medicine in medical faculties: realisation of the topic in the specialty "social medicine, occupational health"]. / Sozialmedizin an medizinischen Fakultäten: Realisierung des Teilbereichs im Fach "Sozialmedizin, Arbeitsmedizin".

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY: The 9 (th) Revision of German Medical Licensing Regulations for Physicians has come into effect on October 1 (st) 2003. Social medicine was separated into the fields ""occupational health, social medicine" and the various cross-sectional modules: epidemiology, biometry, medical computer science; health economics, health-care system, public health; prevention, health promotion; rehabilitation, physical medicine, naturopathic treatment. This paper studies the realisation of teaching in the field social medicine at German medical faculties. METHODS: The survey was conducted in collaboration with the German Association for Social Medicine and Prevention (DGSMP). A survey was conducted at 38 institutes of 36 German medical faculties. The written questionnaire contained mostly selection items in which chances and barriers of the field were queried with supply items. Information about time scale, general conditions and resources was aked for. On the basis of the guidelines of the DGSMP, the topics to be taught were evaluated concerning their relevance and integration into education. RESULTS: The response rate was 68% (n=26). Social insurance, basic principles, responsibility in the Social Security Code and the different providers were judged as the most important topics. There was a strong demand for lecturing material. 82% (n=18) of the faculties wished to have specific material, for example e-learning, examples, lesson plans, curricula and also textbooks. 91% (n=19) of the faculties requested an exchange of information between the faculties concerning educational contents, motivation of students and e-learning. DISCUSSION: The realisation of teaching is different between the faculties concerning the number of hours, teaching methods and number of students per year. The motivation of the students is one of the problems, but also the lack of acceptance within the clinic. Specific resources and exchange between the faculties are necessary concerning e-learning, which is offered at only few faculties so far, but interest for a more intensive usage exists. Potentials of social medicine are the promotion of awareness among the students and the "identification of basics for medical acts in the social security system". Social medicine offers the possibility to connect the theoretical institutes with the clinic.

Student-Led Efforts to Advance Anti-Racist Medical Education.

Over the past decade, medical schools across the United States have increasingly dedicated resources to advancing racial and social justice, such as by supporting diversity and inclusion efforts and by incorporating social medicine into the traditional medical curricula. While these changes are promising, the academic medicine community must apply an anti-racist lens to every aspect of medical education to equip trainees to recognize and address structural inequities. Notably, organizing and scholarly work led by medical students has been critical in advancing anti-racist curricula. In this article, the authors illustrate how student activism has reshaped medical education by highlighting examples of student-led efforts to advance anti-racist curricula at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine. HMS students collaborated with faculty to address aspects of existing clinical practice that perpetuate racism, such as the racial correction factor in determining kidney function. They also responded to the existing curricula by noting missed opportunities to discuss structural racism, and they planned supplemental sessions to address these gaps. At UCSF, students identified specific avenues to improve the rigor of social medicine courses and developed new curricula to equip students with skills to confront and work to dismantle racism. The authors describe how HMS students, in an effort to improve the learning environment, developed a workshop to assist students in navigating microaggressions and discrimination in the clinical setting. At UCSF, students partnered with faculty and administration to advocate pass/fail grading for clerkships after university data revealed racial disparities in students' clerkship assessments. In reviewing these examples of students' advocacy to improve their own curricula and learning environments, the authors aim to provide support for students and faculty pursuing anti-racist curricular changes at their own institutions.

[Community health course--student's evaluation]. / Evaluacija predmeta "zdravlje u zajednici" studenata medicine.

INTRODUCTION: Since 1952, Andrija Stampar School of Public Health, School of Medicine, University of Zagreb, has provided a community health course, based on the medical education approach that the main fields of physicians' action are human settlements and not only consulting rooms and clinics. AIM: The aim of the study was to compare community health course students' evaluations immediately after attending the course at the 4th and 6th study years. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: The survey included 224 4th year medical students attending the community course during the academic year 2007-2008 and 192 same-generation 6th year students (85.7%) during the academic year 2009-2010. Students were required to fill out an evaluation questionnaire about the activities during the community health course using grades from 1-poor to 5-excellent, and to write personal remarks and essay. RESULTS: The academic year 2007-2008 students (n=224) were very satisfied (grades 5 and 4) with preparatory seminar (98% of students), final seminar (97%), course organization (90%) and course contents (89%). The same grades were allocated by 98% of students to public health field research, 94% to work in community nurse service, 93% to work in family practice and health promotion in school and kindergarten, and 87% to water sampling. Satisfaction with the community health course was very emotionally described in final essays: "... work with community nurse service in the poorest part of Croatia has changed my life. I have learned in only few hours to wish less and to give more. Every physician should experience it, because that is real life". Results of the same-generation students (n=192) in the academic year 2009-2010, now at 6th study year, showed them to be still very satisfied (grades 5 and 4) with the activities in the community health course: 94% with health promotion, 92% with work in the community nurse service and family medicine, 86% with course contents, 82% with course organization, 78% with final seminar, 64% with preparatory seminar, 63% with field research, and 49% with water sampling. DISCUSSION: At some medical schools, there are similar attempts to bring students more closely to life conditions, especially to rural communities. Different schools of medicine in the world have attempted to improve and adapt current curricula towards community-oriented education of medical students during undergraduate study and residency. In some countries, there is also the need of improvement of health care in rural areas. CONCLUSION: Results of the course evaluation showed that students had recognized the exceptional value of community health course as a whole. They perceived it as the most valuable and most useful experience in their medical study. By participating in local health care and social care activities in rural area, they got an insight into both the health care system and socio-medical determinants of health.

Honoring Medicine's Social Contract: A Scoping Review of Critical Consciousness in Medical Education.

PURPOSE: To explore how the construct of critical consciousness has been conceptualized within the medical education literature and identify the main elements of critical consciousness in medical education so as to inform educational strategies to foster socially conscious physicians. METHOD: In March 2019, the authors conducted a literature search of 4 databases and Google Scholar, seeking articles discussing critical consciousness in medical education published any time after 1970. Three of the authors screened articles for eligibility. Two transcribed data using a data extraction form and identified preliminary emerging themes, which were then discussed by the whole research team to ensure agreement. RESULTS: Of the initial 317 articles identified, 20 met study inclusion criteria. The publication of academic articles around critical consciousness in medical education has expanded substantially since 2017. Critical consciousness has been conceptualized in the medical education literature through 4 overlapping themes: (1) social awareness, (2) cultural awareness, (3) political awareness, and (4) awareness of educational dynamics. CONCLUSIONS: Critical consciousness has been conceptualized in medical education as an intellectual construct to foster a reflexive awareness of professional power in health care, to unearth the values and biases legitimizing medicine as currently practiced, and to foster transformation and social accountability. Scholars highlighted its potential to improve sociocultural responsibility and to foster compassion in doctors. Adopting a critical pedagogy approach in medical education can help uphold its social accountability through an intrinsic orientation to action, but any enterprise working toward embedding critical pedagogy within curricula must acknowledge and challenge the current structure and culture of medical education itself.

Advancing the Biosocial Perspective in the Clinical Training Environment: Surmounting the Barriers and Constructing the Framework.

Calls for integrating the biosocial perspective into medical education are abundant. The core curricula of most of health professions education, however, have yet to fully integrate this concept. In this Invited Commentary, the authors describe barriers to implementation-the lack of a shared vocabulary, core curriculum, and clinical metrics-and propose a framework for implementing curricula in social medicine and structural competence. Advancing the biosocial perspective necessitates concerted efforts to link classroom training in social medicine to the clinical training environment by implementing tools to identify and address structural vulnerability in the clinical setting. Creating clinical metrics that value health outcomes instead of processes will enable educators to model clinical practice that integrates the social determinants of health as a core component. Finally, formalizing and emphasizing social medicine in graduate medical education will reinforce and solidify the importance of the biosocial perspective in the future clinical practice of our trainees.

Developing a novel Poverty in Healthcare curriculum for medical students at the University of Michigan Medical School.

Nearly 90 million Americans live below 200% of the federal poverty threshold. The links between lower socioeconomic status and poor health are clear, and all physicians face the resulting challenges in patient care. Current medical school curricula do not adequately prepare students to address this issue despite recommendations from the Association of American Medical Colleges and the Institute of Medicine. In response, students and faculty at the University of Michigan Medical Center established the Poverty in Healthcare curriculum, which encompasses required learning experiences spanning all four years of undergraduate medical education. This article describes the design and implementation of this curriculum. The authors provide thorough descriptions of the individual learning experiences, including community site visits, longitudinal cases, mini-electives, and family centered experiences. The authors also discuss the history, costs, challenges, and evaluation process related to the Poverty in Healthcare curriculum, including issues specifically related to medical students' involvement in developing and implementing the curriculum. This information may be used as a guide for other medical schools in the development of curricula to address this current gap in medical student education.

Health and disease in context: a community-based social medicine curriculum.

Despite the increasing attention paid to the role of social forces in determining health, most physicians finish their training ill-prepared to address these issues. The authors describe their efforts to fill that training gap for internal medicine residents at Oregon Health and Science University through a community-based social medicine curriculum, designed in 2006 in conjunction with community partners at Central City Concern (CCC), an organization addressing homelessness, poverty, and addiction in downtown Portland, Oregon. The challenge was to develop a curriculum that would (1) fit within the scheduling constraints of an established categorical internal medicine residency program, (2) give all internal medicine residents a chance to better understand how social forces affect health, and (3) help show how they, as health professionals, might intervene to improve health and health care. The authors maintain that by developing this curriculum with community partners--who took the lead in deciding what residents should learn about their community and how they should learn it--the residency program is providing a relatively brief but extremely rich opportunity for residents to engage the personal, social, and health-related issues experienced by clients served by CCC. The authors first provide a brief overview of the curriculum and describe how the principles and practices of community-based participatory research were used in its development. They then discuss the challenges involved in teaching medical residents about social determinants of health, how their academic-community partnership approaches those challenges, and the recently established methods of evaluating the curriculum.