Through its community involvement programs and Summer Service Learning Preceptorships, the NYMC School of Medicine brings its students, its research and its skills, to neighborhoods throughout Westchester and the surrounding area.
The purpose of the NYMC SOM Service Learning programs is to help students build new aptitudes through hands-on experiences at community sites that will live beyond his/her time in medical school and prepare them to be better physicians in the future. Unlike typical formal learning situations, service learning is akin to situational rather than linear learning, and so is richer in its complexity, connections and impact. Students work directly with the doctors and health professionals at community sites. Working collaboratively with health care professionals at these sites, students create a tangible product that these institutions truly need but do not have. Student reflections about the process are critical to the learning process.
In the Family Medicine Clerkship in third year, all students are required to participate in an interprofessional service learning activity at their practice site. Students engage in project development or implementation or participate in an ongoing project that serves the community by providing preventative services above and beyond the routine provision of office-based medical service. The project may involve a preventive intervention such as screening, education, counseling, disease management, reminder or recalls for patients or provider, developing standing orders, or improving access to preventive services. Afterwards students complete a guided reflection on the experience which explores how this experience impacted beliefs about civic responsibility, being a leader in a community effort, collaborating with other members of the healthcare team and the impact on the development of their professional identity.
A variety of opportunities to be involved in the local community by volunteering at hospitals, shelters and clinics; delivering tobacco-awareness programs in local middle and high schools; and staffing the annual Community Health Fair.
Spanish for The Little House of Health, La Casita de la Salud is an inner-city health clinic run by New York Medical College medical students. Located at 413 East 120th Street in Manhattan, the clinic is dedicated to serving the uninsured population of East Harlem. La Casita operates as an adjunct to an existing satellite clinic of Metropolitan Hospital Center, La Clinica del Barrio (The Neighborhood Clinic).
The goal of the clinic is to improve health outcomes by providing quality culturally competent care regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, nationality or ability to pay. The clinic emphasizes preventative medicine through patient-centered care and education, and strives to be a model of efficiency and cost-effectiveness in the achievement of the aforementioned goals. Through cultural competency and increasing access to healthcare for uninsured and undocumented residents, the clinic founders hope to help bridge the pervasive health disparity gap in our healthcare system.
For more information, visit the La casita de la salud website.
Beyond Bars is a new program that aims to improve health education among underserved populations. Started by Rana Mehdizadeh and held at Woodfield Cottage, Beyond Bars aims to provide the support and resources underprivileged youth need to thrive later in live. However, the benefits are truly two-fold. In addition to educating arrested youth and providing them with the resources to make healthy choices, the program also aims to train future healthcare professionals to empathize with a patient’s past, note that it may be a contributing factor to their health, but ultimately be non-judgmental and look beyond it.
The truth is that many of the teens currently at Woodfield Cottage (as well as juvenile detention centers nationwide) come from low socioeconomic backgrounds and simply have not had the support, resources, and/or education needed to reach their full potential. These teens are generally very intelligent and interested in learning about their health and bettering themselves but haven’t had the opportunity to do so. Some may have forgone schooling to work and provide a source of income for their families; others may not have even had a choice, and had been forced into illegal activity by a third party.
Beyond Bars aims to right this wrong by holding weekly discussion-based health education classes for the kids at Woodfield. Through these classes, we also hope to create a strong support system for them as they go through the long and stressful process of awaiting their court dates and sentencing. Though it is currently in its beginning stages, we hope to see Beyond Bars become a staple of New York Medical College, providing a well-rounded education for physicians for years to come.
NYMC Cares Week is hosted by the Gold Humanism Honor Society (GHHS). While it takes a large amount of hard work and volunteers, it enables the students of NYMC to get out into the community and make a positive and immediate impact on people’s lives. In past years, members of GHHS and NYMC volunteered at the Grasslands Homeless Shelter, both to perform blood pressure screens and paint the facilities. GHHS members provide a tasty snack for those underclassmen studying hard for their upcoming tests.
