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2008 Spencer Foreman Award for Outstanding Community Service
University of New Mexico School of Medicine
With a commitment to serving the entire state, the University of
New Mexico School of Medicine (UNM) is truly on the frontier of
community service, pioneering the "bottom-up" approach to community
outreach. With almost all of the state's 33 counties classified
as federally designated "health professional shortage areas," New
Mexicans have little access to quality health care. The UNM's mission
of serving the state's communities through direct patient care,
producing the next generation of health care providers, and exploring
the relevant causes of both health and disease is carried out through
an array of community-based programs like HEROs, the Health Commons
initiative, and Project ECHO.
Healthy communities, said UNM Medical School Dean Paul Roth, M.D.,
are a key priority for the UNM. Community service by students is
not only encouraged, but embedded in the medical school's curriculum.
First-year medical students have afternoons free for service engagement
and, in the summer before their second year, students complete practical
immersions, exposing them to New Mexico's neediest populations (Native
Americans and undocumented immigrants). The school hopes that students
will return to practice in these communities-and statistics show
that more than 50 percent of its graduates stay in New Mexico. In
providing these services, UNM takes a bottom-up (instead of a "top-down")
approach, allowing communities to voice their health care needs
and programs to be tailored accordingly.
"We
have a proven track record of successful and sustained community
programs that have been achieved through the collective efforts
of our faculty, staff, residents, medical students, and community
partners," Dr. Roth says.
In other words, the UNM customizes service programs based
on community input.
For example, the Health Extension Rural Offices (HEROs) program
seeks to improve the overall health status of medically underserved
areas by reducing health disparities and addressing the underlying
social determinants of disease. Jointly run by the UNM and New Mexico
State University in collaboration with the UNM Health Sciences Center,
this unique approach enables HEROs' workers to focus on the health
and social needs of each community and help develop a local capacity
to address them. In true pioneer spirit, one volunteer explains
the HEROs philosophy as the program that asks, "Why not?" rather
than, "Why?"
Community input also has been critical to the success of UNM's
Health Commons initiative, which models the medical home approach
to patient care. Serving both inner-city neighborhoods and rural
counties, this safety-net program seeks to break the poverty cycle
for the uninsured and underinsured. By pooling resources from its
partnerships with public and private sector businesses, health care
providers, local and state government agencies, elected officials,
associations, and advisory boards, Health Commons has become a seamless
provider of social, medical, and behavioral services. The initiative
takes an integrated, even holistic, approach to care by looking
at economic and social factors of health problems (like unemployment),
thus surpassing the traditional notion of primary care services.
Additionally, the provision of comprehensive care services in one
location reduces visit and referral wait times and also prevents
duplicative procedures.
Guided by community input, the UNM now utilizes technology to
reach out to patients with chronic, complex diseases in even the
most remote sections of the state. Through Project Extension for
Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO), UNM enables patients in these
areas to be "seen" by specialists in other parts of the state. For
example, having identified populations with high hepatitis C rates,
Project ECHO now links specialists with rural health care providers
in weekly teleconferences to improve access to state-of-the-art
care. Specialists also provide distance learning by training rural
providers in cutting-edge procedures through the weekly sessions.
About the Spencer Foreman Award for Outstanding Community Service
The Spencer Foreman Award for Outstanding Community Service
honors member institutions with a longstanding, major institutional
commitment to addressing community needs. The award recognizes exceptional
programs that go well beyond the traditional role of academic medicine
and reach communities whose needs are not being met through the
traditional health delivery system. The award was renamed in 2007
to honor Spencer "Spike" Foreman, M.D., who established the award
in 1993 while serving as chair of the AAMC.
Find out more about the Spencer
Foreman Award for Outstanding Community Service, to nominate a
deserving individual, and to view a list of previous recipients.
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