FIU among 20 schools selected to transform physician training

Dr. Suzanne Minor and medical student Gabriel Suarez during a GFF NeighborhoodHELP™ household visit.

The Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine (HWCOM) is one of 20 medical schools selected nationwide to join the American Medical Association’s Accelerating Change in Medical Education Consortium – which is studying how to reshape how future physicians are trained in order to improve health outcomes.

Together with a founding group of 11 schools, the new 31-school consortium will support training for an estimated 18,000 medical students who will one day care for 31.4 million patients each year.

“To be included among the leading medical schools in the nation is an honor and a testament to our unique and innovative approach to medical education which is centered around our Green Family Foundation NeighborhoodHELP program,” says Dr. John A. Rock, HWCOM’s founding dean and senior vice president for Health Affairs.

According to the American Medical Association (AMA), the schools were chosen out of 170 applicants and will each receive $75,000 to advance the AMA’s innovative work aimed at transforming undergraduate medical education to better align with the 21st century health care system.

“By working together, we believe that during the next several years this effort will produce physicians who are not just skilled clinicians, but system-based thinkers, change agents, technology champions and inter-professional team players,“ says Susan E. Skochelak, M.D., M.P.H., AMA Group vice president for Medical Education.

It is not much different from the promise HWCOM founders made in 2006 when they set out with a mission to train the next generation of socially accountable, community-based physicians who think holistically, globally and locally.

“As we approach our 10th anniversary, we are keeping our promise, and others are taking notice,” Rock says.

HWCOM Associate Dean for Curriculum and Medical Education Dr. Karin Esposito and the GFF NeighborhoodHELP team spearheaded the effort to secure the accompanying grant and selection into the prestigious group. Dr. Onelia Lage, associate professor in the Department of Medicine, Family Medicine and Community Health, will serve as principal investigator on the project.