College Within the College (CwiC) – Population Health in Medical Education

Programmatic tracks providing students with academic opportunities outside of the traditional medical curriculum represents a national trend in medical education. With HRSA Interdisciplinary and Interprofessional Joint Graduate Degree five-year funding, the Department of Family and Community Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University created an Inter-professional Primary Care Dual Degree Program (IPCDDP), building on Jefferson Medical College's College within the College (CwiC) Scholarly Concentration Program in Population Health. The mission of the IPCDDP is to provide training in primary care and education in chronic care management and population health in order to prepare primary care leaders to improve the health of America's most vulnerable and underserved populations. CwiC – PH is a four year longitudinal course. Key components include: Year 1 – enhanced population health components of Introduction to Clinical Medicine (ICM) I, community immersions, and twice monthly seminars Summer – population health related programs locally and globally Year 2 – case studies in Fundamentals of Clinical Medicine, twice monthly seminars applying social and behavioral foundations of Public Health Year 3 – enhanced clerkship experiences Year 4 – Two community electives and completion of a Capstone Project, Longitudinal faculty-student and student-student mentoring Two cohorts have entered the program, representing 13% of the medical school class. Benefits to students include a certificate upon program completion, recognition in Dean's letters, and 15 credits applied to the Jefferson MPH program. Institutional collaboration and a description of the CwiC – PH program will be presented along with characteristics of enrolled students, implementation, evaluation, and sustainability plans.