Profesorado y otros recursos humanos necesarios y disponibles para llevar a cabo el plan de estudios propuesto

The Homeless and Indigent Population Health Outreach Project (HIPHOP) was established by a group of RWJMS students in 1992 to help meet the health needs of the greater New Brunswick community. HIPHOP links medical students with the community in an attempt to reduce barriers that prevent community members from accessing primary and preventive health care and education. Program objectives of HIPHOP are:

• To provide a variety of health outreach services to an underserved population • To provide medical, physician assistant, and public health students with

meaningful service-learning experiences

• To create a heightened awareness of the role that RWJMS should play within its community

• To foster an atmosphere of responsible citizenship and encourage a lifelong commitment to community service and humanism in medicine

• To expand the program locally in such a way that it might be duplicated on a national level

The project has expanded from a small ad hoc group of dedicated medical students to a well-structured organization involving over 300+ medical and physician assistant students, faculty/staff members, and community representatives. In 2004, HIPHOP evolved into an umbrella program containing two major initiatives: the Community Health Initiative (C.H.I.) and the Promise Clinic. These initiatives are designed to link specific learning objectives for health professional students with the health-related needs of the community.

The Community Health Initiative (CHI) has many projects and electives that promote healthy living practices, teach preventive health education, support and advocate for underserved and indigent populations and expose students to indigent primary health care services. The CHI Clinic Project offers community members increased access to primary care by assigning medical students to shadow and assist at St. John's Clinic,

UMDNJ-Annual Institutional Profile, September 1, 2009 PUBLIC/COMMUNITY SERVICE ACTIVITIES

EBCHC, Robert Wood Johnson AIDS Program and Edison Job Corp Wellness Center. These clinics and/or community centers serve indigent and underserved Greater New Brunswick area community members. HIPHOP student participants are exposed to indigent health care issues and their varied medical dynamics.

The CHI-Health Workshop Project is an educational program that develops a community mentoring relationship while providing health promotion educational workshops. This is accomplished through a series of interactive workshops presented to various community based organizations and public schools in the Greater New Brunswick area. In these workshops students address issues such as HIV prevention, sexual health and responsibility, self-esteem, environmental influences on health and behavior, conflict resolution, nutrition, substance abuse and much more. The CHI— Electives program comprises Students Teaching AIDS to Students (STATS), Patients At/In Risk (PAIR), Issues in Cultural Competency and the Underserved Community Elective (ICCUCE), and Literacy Initiative for Students Teaching Older Spanish Speakers (LISTOS). These programs are in place to provide students additional opportunities to support, advocate and understand the issues of at risk communities. The students who participate in these electives may volunteer to serve meals, attend lectures pertaining to issues of underserved populations, accompany at-risk young pregnant mothers to health literacy education sessions or clinics visits, or sit through a chemotherapy session with a patient. These are some examples of elective participation among the many different forms of elective participatory options.

The final component of CHI is Project Outreach which offers a multitude of one-time volunteer experience for anyone who would like to get involved. Such experiences include serving at Elijah’s Soup Kitchen, making knot blankets for the homeless, counting the homeless, reading to children, health fair participation, and organizing the program’s annual drives and 5k Run.

The Promise Clinic was started in January 2005 by a group of HIPHOP students to provide increased access to health care for the homeless who receive their meals and social services at Elijah’s Promise Soup Kitchen, a shelter in New Brunswick. In the Promise Clinic, a student doctor team of first- through fourth-year students develops and implements a plan of care for their patients. This plan is overseen by volunteer faculty members from RWJMS who are the preceptors for this experience. The students collaborate with other groups to provide a broad range of social services to their patients and promote a culture of service among future health care professionals. The clinic is housed at an existing community health center—St. John’s Family Health and Services Center. The students manage an on-site medication room that provides medications free of charge under faculty supervision. Students assist clients with applying for patient prescription assistance programs and hospital Charity Care to offset the cost of: laboratory testing, imaging studies, and emergency care. Related health workshops are conducted to address topics such as nutrition and exercise to complement the care of the patient. Students are responsible for managing the operation of this experience (scheduling patients and faculty, purchasing and tracking medication).

The Urban Health Initiative (UHI) at the RWJMS regional campus in Camden provides a broad range of services to the Camden community and is critically important to RWJMS-Camden students. UHI is an organized opportunity for third- and fourth-year medical students to become involved in the Camden community in order to improve the overall quality of life of its citizens through service, charity, and education. Programs

PUBLIC/COMMUNITY SERVICE ACTIVITIES UMDNJ-Annual Institutional Profile, September 1, 2009

include an Adult Health Outreach Project (HOP) Clinic, a Pediatric HOP Clinic, a Women’s HOP Clinic, and many school and community outreach programs.

In August 2000, the AAMC-Pfizer Caring for Communities Project awarded funding to third- and fourth-year medical students from RWJMS-Camden to support the development of the first Adult HOP Clinic. This clinic provides free medical care to 110 uninsured adult residents of Camden in a medical student-run facility at the LEAP Academy Health Center. Twenty-nine clinical faculty volunteer as preceptors in the HOP clinics. Students staff all aspects of the clinic, from the front desk to the pharmacy. All third-year RWJMS-Camden students participate in this elective experience, and each student follows from one to three patients for the year. A Pediatric HOP Clinic, begun in 2003, now serves about 80 patients whose families are uninsured residents of Camden. A Women’s Health HOP clinic, begun in 2005, serves up to 60 patients.

In addition to the free clinics, the UHI arranges for medical student volunteers to teach CPR and First Aid in schools, day care centers and churches throughout the city, as well as a comprehensive family health curriculum for students in grades K to 9 at the LEAP Academy. UHI also sponsors a Mentoring Program in which medical students provide small group and one-on-one teaching on a variety of health topics to middle school students at the Promise Charter School.

A joint program between UHI and Cooper Hospital, the Health Science Academy was begun in 2006 as an opportunity for Camden high school students interested in health- related careers to gain first-hand exposure to the hospital environment and to receive advanced teaching in the health sciences. After an application process, high school students are selected to participate in this year-long program, which occurs every other Wednesday afternoon. These students head straight to the hospital after school for additional lessons on a range of health topics, such as diabetes, cardiology, bone/joint fractures, and substance abuse. RWJMS-Camden students are actively involved in presenting these lessons and mentoring the participants. On alternating sessions, the students are taken onto the hospital floors for tours of various clinical departments and talks about a variety of careers within the hospital setting.

Rarely today are patients given an extended amount of time to spend with their primary care provider to ask whatever health related concerns they have. Adopted as a UHI

project in 2006, the Ask-the-Provider program gives local Camden residents just that

opportunity. Once each month, the program provides an open forum for them to ask health providers any questions they have in an informal, intimate, and relaxed setting. In cooperation with Respond, Inc., a local day care organization, several medical students have connected Camden residents with the medical expertise of volunteer physicians.

This year, the program has taken on new shape, integrating a teaching segment for

medical students to present a health-related topic to the evening’s audience. Teaching topics this past academic year have included nutrition, infant feeding, asthma, children’s health, and gynecological care.