Summer Seminar Series 2007

Department of Family Medicine and Community Health

Course Director: Peter Cronholm, MD MSCE (peter.cronholm@uphs.upenn.edu)

Description: The Community Medicine Summer Assistantship (CMSA) is a two-month community oriented learning opportunity for medical students who have completed their first year of training. The CMSA will be linked to the Sayre School Clinic, a Health Resources and Services Administration-funded community medical healthcare site developed in and coordinated with the Sayre School of West Philadelphia. The CMSA is a learning opportunity that will involve a structured educational program in community medicine as well as the development and implementation of student's individual community medicine project. The Sayre School healthcare site is a newly funded initiative which provides a unique opportunity to learn about community partnerships for health and directly affect the initial development of a novel school-based healthcare site. Weekly lectures in the development and execution of community medicine will be provided by the course director and invited lecturers. Student-directed community medicine projects will be developed by CMSA participants with support of the course director, faculty sponsor and in conjunction with the Sayre community advisory board (if project is conducted at Sayre). A final presentation and paper reporting the product of these efforts are to be presented to the CMSA course director and the Sayre community advisory board (if project is conducted at Sayre) for successful completion of the CMSA. Participants will be expected to dedicate full-time to this effort for the duration of the summer recess with allowance for vacation time to be worked out on an individual basis. Seminar sessions will be on Wednesday afternoons from 3:30-5:30 in the Gates conference room starting the week of June 27^th, 2007. 

Requirements: 1) Development and implementation of an individual community medicine project approved by CMSA Course Director and faculty supervisor; 2) Attendance and participation in weekly seminars (Summer Seminar Series) in the development and execution of student's community medicine projects; 3) Development of a final paper describing the community medicine project and summary of the evidence base justifying the specific aims of your project (5-10 pages: Referenced: Manuscript format - Intro, methods, results, conclusions); 4) a final presentation of the student's community medicine projects (20 minute presentations; Manuscript format - Intro, methods, results, conclusions); 5) participating students will be expected to meet with their faculty sponsors at a minimum of on a weekly basis; 6) All participating students are required to complete an anonymous evaluation of course content and process; 7) Prior to implementation of any research projects, all students must complete the University of Pennsylvania Patient Oriented Research (http://www.med.upenn.edu/ohrtrain/POR/); and 8) obtain approval of the proposed project from the University of Pennsylvania Institutional Review Board (http://www.upenn.edu/regulatoryaffairs/IRB.html).