Featured Publications

The Social Mission of Medical Education: Ranking the Schools
June 15, 2010 - Annals of Internal Medicine
"Traditional ranking of medical schools consider such factors as research funding rather than factors related to how the schools contribute to the physician workforce. Many believe that medical schools should be accountable to society and have a social mission to train physicians to care for the population as a whole, taking into account such issues as whether schools produce physicians who practice primary care, work in underserved areas, and represent the diversity of the population. This study proposes a method to calculate a social mission score to indicate school performance in these areas."
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Academic Medical Centers and Underserved Communities: Modern Complexities of an Enduring Relationship
July 2010 – Journal of the National Medical Association
"Despite recent promise of health care reform, many academic medical centers continue to struggle to balance what at times may be competing missions and obligations. Our results suggest the breadth of views that are present regarding these challenges and may be of interest to a variety of stakeholders involved in the relationship between academic centers and their surrounding, often underserved, communities." Read More...

"But I See Old People Everywhere": Dispelling the Myth That Eldercare Is Learned in Nongeriatric Clerkships
July 2010 – Academic Medicine
"In addition to challenging prevailing curricular tendencies in U.S. and Canadian medical schools, our study suggests that an eldercare clerkship rotation is a valuable addition to undergraduate training. Moreover, this curricular initiative may serve to show other schools the importance of mandatory, transdisciplinary instruction in the skill-set required by graduating physicians who will encounter in their clinical practices what Kirchheimer has called the 'gray tsunami.' " Read More...