Our Robust Equity Curriculum
SO/GI / LGBTQ
Residents and faculty have comprehensive training in providing patient-centered care for all patients, regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI). Training and competency in LGBTQI-specific care is achieved through didactics, conferences, reflection, as well as working with speakers from Fenway Health and other prominent institutions. Topics include LGBTQI-specific preventive screening, counseling, wellness, resources, gender-affirming therapy, and more. Residents and faculty have the opportunity to work with CHA's diverse community of patients along the entire SOGI spectrum.
QES - Quality, Equity & Safety Rounds
Formerly known as Mortality & Morbidity (M&M), the traditional M&M has been revamped on the principle that we cannot achieve quality without equity. These rounds focus on how health inequities affect the quality and safety of patients and team care at CHA. The format is facilitated discussion around patient cases -- there is time for personal reflection as well as formal structural analysis. We also use this time to develop practical skills around making the implicit explicit, addressing inequity in exam room and advocating for a culture of equity through policy change.
Disability Curriculum
Health is a vital component of quality of life. People with disabilities face significant barriers to access healthcare and maintain their wellbeing. Through clinical rotations, panel management and didactics, residents learn about providing healthcare to patients with disabilities of all ages.
Reproductive Health
At Malden Family Medicine we believe that reproductive health is core to wellness and that patients should be able to access the full range of family planning services from the doctor that knows them best. You will provide routine well woman, gynecologic and reproductive health care to your own patient panel. Contraceptive management, options counseling for unintended pregnancy, miscarriage management and early abortion care are core curricular topics. You will learn colposcopy, endometrial sampling, IUD and Nexplanon insertion, early pregnancy ultrasound and uterine aspiration in dedicated procedure sessions with family medicine faculty at CHA. Additional procedural training is provided in a private family planning clinic. An area of concentration in Reproductive Health is available for those seeking more advanced training.
Community Medicine
The Community Medicine curriculum at Tufts University Family Medicine Residency provides resident physicians with an understanding of the social, economic, and cultural contexts of health as well as an appreciation of the public health perspective on community well-being. The longitudinal second year Community Medicine curriculum includes a mix of didactic sessions, and a community health practicum where residents partner with community organizations and initiatives.
Didactic sessions focus on local public health statistics, social influences* of health and disease, racism, and the elements of a community health needs assessment. Residents do a scavenger hunt to visit local community agencies, and receive a didactic led by Malden High School students centered how to best deliver patient centered care to the teen population.
For the practicum, residents partner with a local agency, learn about their communities’ strengths and needs and collaboratively build a project to help address a broadly-defined health need. Throughout the second year, the residents work with their community partners to carry out the project. To increase impact we prioritize longitudinal projects that build authentic relationships in our community over years, not months. There are be opportunities to apply for grant funding for projects, and the projects are presented at the Cambridge Health Alliance’s annual academic poster session. Beyond the second year, we also facilitate community medicine electives for senior residents, focusing in areas such as healthcare for the homeless, addiction medicine, and teen health.
The Community Medicine curriculum at Tufts University Family Medicine Residency is responsive to the changing landscape of healthcare delivery. Massachusetts and particularly Cambridge Health Alliance are on the bleeding edge of this change as the healthcare system shifts from volume to value. We must become more community and patient-centered and understand the realities in which our patients live, learn and work. This curriculum aims to shift residents thinking beyond healthcare to health. Given healthcare delivery at best makes up 15% of what makes someone well, we must develop deep partnerships with our community and incorporate public health to achieve the goal of population health.
*We purposefully use influences of health instead of the more common determinants since we believe these factors can be changed with deliberate focus and work whereas determinants has a more permanent connotation.
Take a look at some of our community projects: