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AAMC Announces Second Round of "Caring for Community" Grantees

U.S. medical schools to develop student-initiated community service activities

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Washington, D.C., September 20, 2000 -- The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) in collaboration with Pfizer, Inc. and the Pfizer Medical Humanities Initiative awards six U.S. medical schools with grants to develop medical student-initiated services and programs for local communities. Five institutions were awarded in the program's first round of funding last spring.

The six 2000 grantees are: SUNY Downstate College of Medicine, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, University of South Carolina School of Medicine, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School at Camden.

A unique aspect of this institutional grant program is its focus on projects initiated, developed, and run primarily by medical students. While faculty and institutional involvement are integral components for sustaining community service efforts, the ultimate goal of the program is to encourage students to identify untapped avenues of community service.

"Caring for Community" provides three types of grants-new, supplemental, and non-continuous. New projects are funded at $12,000 the first year, decreasing to $3,000 in the fourth and last year of the grant. Supplemental grants support new projects within existing programs and are funded at $8,000 the first year, decreasing to $2,000 in the fourth year. Non-continuous grants are provided for short-term projects and can be funded up to $15,000.

Grantees and Program Descriptions

• SUNY Downstate College of Medicine-The Caring for our Brooklyn Community-Influenza/Pneumococcal Vaccination Outreach Program is an adult vaccination program with the goal of eradicating death from influenza and pneumonia (non-HIV). These diseases represent the fourth leading causes of death in the target area of New York.
  
• University of North Carolina School of Medicine-SHAC (Student Health Action Coalition) is a student run free indigent medical clinic. The coalition was created with the belief that adequate housing is critical for the health of families and the communities in which they live. The coalition proposes to form a new partnership with Habitat for Humanity, with the primary goal to build at least one house per year for a family in need. A secondary goal is to form an endowment for SHAC that can sustain the long-term financial needs of the SHAC-Habitat partnership.
  
• Stanford University Medical School-The Garden Project's goal is to enable medical students to design, build, and oversee the maintenance of an accessible and interactive garden for use by medical-psychiatry patients and families. Counting on the real and reassuring qualities of plants, trees, flowers and vegetables to provide patients with a way to feel less isolated from society, the Project sets out to reconnect patients in the med-psych unit with the natural world. The 'Garden' will be located at the Lucile Salter Packard Children's Hospital.
  
• University of South Carolina School of Medicine-Project H.E.A.R.T. is a balanced hypertension prevention program that involves participation from all students at the School of Medicine to provide education and preventive services to the underserved minority community in Columbia, South Carolina. Interactive teaching sessions with children, health screenings for adults and other activities are proposed to increase the awareness of hypertension and its risk factors in the targeted community. The school believes its efforts in this community will help to alleviate racial and ethnic disparities associated with hypertension and its related outcomes while improving the cultural competence of students at the School of Medicine.
  
• Albert Einstein College of Medicine-The Walton-Einstein Community Health Outreach (ECHO) Free Clinic aims to provide free, comprehensive primary care and health education to uninsured residents of the Bronx. The program also plans to identify and enroll patients and their families in government-subsidized health plans, such as Medicaid, Medicare, Child Health Plus and Family Health Plans. The clinic will foster skills in leadership, health education, social services, and clinical administration through student-initiated service learning, and encourage volunteerism and public service in medical students and health care professionals.
  
• University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School at Camden-The Health Outreach Project (HOP) plans to address the need for access to quality health care in the city of Camden, to provide an enriching community health experience, to foster community health advocacy skills, and to provide students of UMDNJ-RWJMS at Camden with the skills necessary to run a primary care health clinic. HOP will be fully integrated into the existing social and community services as a fully operational outpatient clinic pushing the bounds of primary care.

The last round of grantees included: Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science/University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine (UCLA); Tulane University School of Medicine; University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine; University of Kentucky College of Medicine; and Louisiana State University School of Medicine in Shreveport. Programs and services are currently underway at these institutions. The next round of grantees will be selected in April 2001. For more information, please contact Robert L. Beran, Ph.D. or 202-828-0250.

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The Association of American Medical Colleges represents the 125 accredited U.S. medical schools; the 16 accredited Canadian medical schools; some 400 major teaching hospitals, including 74 Veterans Administration medical centers; 91 academic and professional societies representing nearly 88,000 faculty members; and the nation's 67,000 medical students and 102,000 residents.