East Harlem Health Outreach Partnership (EHHOP)

What is EHHOP?
Students of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine developed the East Harlem Health Outreach Partnership (EHHOP) as an effective vehicle for bringing high quality health care services to the East Harlem community. We provide comprehensive health care, with the specific objective of reaching out to those uninsured residents of East Harlem, regardless of an inability to pay. As medical students, we commit to serving our patients' health care needs, and, in so doing, commit to expanding our own knowledge, skills, and ideals.

Our Services
EHHOP is committed to providing quality primary care to our patients. Over the years, we have expanded our staff to include on-site socials workers, nutritionists, psychiatrists, and more. As we work toward providing a medical home for our patient population, we continue to serve as a bridge to medical and social support resources that we cannot provide. We provide these services in a confidential manner in a respectful environment, as we seek to empower our patients to participate actively in their physical and emotional well-being.

We offer a range of services that include:

• Primary and Preventive Care
• Non-Emergency Urgent Care
• Health Education and Awareness
• Patient Advocacy
• Social Work Counseling
• Prescribed Medications
• Laboratory Testing
• Gynecologic Screening
• Sexually Transmitted Infection Testing
• Voluntary HIV/AIDS testing and counseling
• Specialty Care and Imaging Referrals
• Nutrition counseling
• Health Insurance Enrollment

How are students involved at EHHOP?

EHHOP is a free clinic run completely by medical students of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. The students are involved directly in all aspects of the clinic’s activities. Students are in charge of patient care activities on Saturdays and help oversee the behind-the-scenes infrastructure to ensure that clinic operations function smoothly. EHHOP is one of the largest student organizations at Mount Sinai, with 145 or more medical students engaged in clinic activities.

EHHOP offers our student volunteers clinical exposure and a chance to learn about serving and advocating for an underserved community. For our first- and second-year students, EHHOP provides opportunities for hands-on experience in applying the physical examination and history-taking skills. These students also volunteer as benefit screeners, HIV testers, and patient coordinators for our specialty clinics.

For the third- and fourth-year students, our services provide a platform to practice clinical reasoning and to act as mentors and educators as they work with first- and second-year students. EHHOP also provides all of our medical students experience with patients who previously had limited health care exposure, enabling them to learn about some of the barriers to care.

Students can also volunteer behind the scenes of the clinic learning skills involved in managing a sustainable medical clinic. These experiences include working to help reduce the clinic’s cost by checking to see that formulary drugs are prescribed instead of costly alternatives and coordinating between physicians, patients, and the Resource Entitlement and Advocacy Program (REAP) office to get patient referrals.

What is the EHHOP student run model?

During the Saturday clinic, students fill several main roles.  The junior clinician, a first or second year medical student, and the senior clinician, a third or fourth year medical student, are primarily involved in patient care. The junior and senior clinicians take the medical history, perform the physical exam and then present their findings and suggested treatment plan to the volunteering attending physician. We also have a lab technician who acts as the phlebotomist for the day. The phlebotomist is a first or second year student who draws blood, gives injections and organizes the paperwork and samples for the lab.

The Teaching Senior Program consists of ten fourth-year students who rotate teaching duties at each weekly clinic. They begin the clinic day with a teaching session about a topic of their choosing that is pertinent to our patient population. They also check in with the clinical teams during the day to advise the teams on ways of managing the patient and treatment plans.

The clinic managers are an integral part of our team and they work specifically to streamline the operations of the day, and answer patient calls during the week.

The student leadership is comprised of a steering committee of elected medical students that serve one-year terms.  Under the guidance of EHHOP’s medical director and program director, the steering committee continually revises and improves clinic policies and protocols.