Opportunities and Challenges in Educating Community-Responsive Physicians

Medical educators, funders, and policy makers are placing greater emphasis on educating physicians-in-training to provide community-responsive care and to participate in communityfocused health-promotion and disease-prevention efforts. The MCP Hahnemann School of Medicine requires all first-year students to work in the community on projects involving health education, needs and resource assessment, advocacy, outreach, and other community health skills. The Department of Community and Preventive Medicine at MCP Hahnemann directs these required courses, as well as other elective programs that provide students the opportunity to develop community health competencies. This article summarizes key elements of these educational activities and discusses challenges we have encountered developing and implementing these activities and our responses. Finally, we suggest some issues and questions deserving further exploration.