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Community Health Fellowship Program
The Community Health Fellowship Program introduces first-year medical students to community-based participatory research, and emphasizes the importance of collaboration as a means for addressing community health problems in underserved communities.
Goals and Objectives
The focus of the experience is to develop relationships between the UT Southwestern Medical Center Community and community-based health and social services delivery organizations in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. These partnerships are designed to assist community-based organizations in identifying the needs of those they serve, investigating how well those needs are being met, evaluating additional resource needs, and providing information that can be used to obtain and coordinate additional resources. All work is done in a way that benefits the participating organization, while teaching medical students the value of collaboration to achieve optimal health outcomes among the underserved.
Now entering its eighth year, the Community Health Fellowship Program annually offers a small group of exceptional medical students an opportunity to:
• Address the health care needs of inner-city and at-risk underserved patients in a community-based setting
• Obtain real world clinical experience treating at-risk patients under the direction of a mentor
• Gain applied research knowledge through participating in a didactic research training curriculum combined with a community health agency-based research project
Design
This fellowship is offered for nine (9) weeks during the summer, and provides a stipend. Students do not have to be enrolled in the CART program to be considered for the Community Health Fellowship Program, but all students interested in CART are invited to apply for the fellowship if they are seeking a comprehensive community-based learning experience. Some additional sessions are required in April and May to solidify community projects and equip students with basic HIPAA research and human subjects training prior to the summer program. A limited amount of additional funding is also available for presenting research findings at a national or regional professional meeting.
Update
Many outstanding projects have paved the way for further research and implementation of ideas and recommendations by the community agency. To see past projects, click here .
Contact
If you are interested in the program, please complete the CHFP 2009 Student Application Form and return to Tiffany Billmeier. Stay tuned for the 2010 CHFP Application Deadline.
For more information, please contact:
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