Department of Community and Preventive Medicine
Undergraduate Medical EducationCM1- Epidemiology and Biostatistics: This 30-hour course is required for all first-year medical students. It is a combination of lecture and seminar. The seminars are led by a team consisting of one physician and one nonphysician, such as epidemiologist or statistician. It uses a syllabus, textbooks, and reading of selected papers. Evaluation is by written examination. The overall course goals are to help the student develop skills in independent appraisal of the medical literature, become facile with the basic concepts of epidemiology, and understand the use of elementary descriptive and analytic statistics in medicine. In 1996, the problem-based learning method was formally implemented. Students, working together in small groups, have to analyze and solve a series of clinical epidemiology cases. This method fosters independent reasoning and acquisition of self-learning skills. CM3- Family Medicine Clerkship: This is a required third-year Mount Sinai School of Medicine clerkship that is four weeks in length. The goal is to expose students to ambulatory primary care medicine for patients of all ages. Focus is on clinical assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of acute and chronic medical conditions, preventive medicine, anticipatory guidance, and the psychosocial aspects of treatment planning in the context of family and community. The clerkship provides a foundation for these skills through didactics and interactive web-based lectures, small group sessions and clinical care sessions. Small group sessions include student presentations of cases seen at the clinical sites and discussion of U.S. Preventive Services Task Forces Guideline recommendations for the patient as well as management and treatment decisions. Undergraduate Electives: The Department of Community and Preventive Medicine offers opportunities for elective study throughout the four years of undergraduate medical education. Such studies include seminars offered by the various divisions, collaborative courses and special research projects, and opportunities to participate in community medicine projects sponsored by community agencies, government, or other universities in New York City, elsewhere in the United States, or abroad. Past electives have covered areas such as social work, medical anthropology and history, environmental and occupational medicine, epidemiology information service work with the CDC or the city health department, health planning, politics, and organization. The Department also sponsors individually-arranged electives in primary care and international community medicine. Additionally, students have elective experiences in the Environmental and Occupational Medicine Summer Program, sponsored by the Department, and Department community-based health services evaluation programs supported in part by the School of Medicine Levinson fellowships and the Department’s Health of the Public grant award. This award also led to the expansion of the Master of Public Health Program to medical students. The Summer Medical Student Program immerses highly competent medical students in a rich research setting pertaining to environmental and occupational health for the purpose of attracting them into research careers in these disciplines.
Medical Student Community Service Opportunities Program: This is a program established in 1993 at the request of first- and second-year medical students to identify volunteer community service opportunities in East Harlem. The program is coordinated by the Hospital Department of Community Relations (212) 241-6818. |