Family Medicine Interest Group (FMIG)
Community Outreach
One of the goals for our FMIG is to better establish our outreach activities as a group. Our re-structuring efforts this year focused on expanding our membership to increase our presence in the community. Though limited in scope, our group's participation in various activities provided much needed services to our community. Whether as a group or as individuals, the spirit of service resides in our FMIG and will only continue to flourish as our group builds its infrastructure to support larger events.
Lennox Health Fair
The Lennox Health Fair is a collaborative effort between the Latino Medical School Association at UCLA and the Lennox School District. It began in 1992 in an effort to use the school as a resource to provide health care and social services, and as a way to teach language and work skills to parents. The health fair continues to be important because Lennox has the highest number of children living in poverty in the Los Angeles area and many of the families in Lennox do not have health insurance. Today, the bi-annual Lennox Health Fair has grown enormously to become a comprehensive health service that can treat as many as 250 individuals in one day. Many members of FMIG participate in the Lennox Health Fair as a way to practice their clinical skills, give back to the community, and support the idea of Family Medicine and preventative health care. In addition, a current member of the FMIG executive board, Andrea Khosropour, has further demonstrated her commitment to the community and to Family Medicine by also taking on leadership roles in the planning of the Lennox Health Fair. She has used the contacts we have made as FMIG officers to help recruit outstanding Family Medicine physicians to staff the event.
Undergraduate and Incoming Student Outreach
Through his job as a Graduate Mentor on the UCLA undergraduate campus, Joel Ramirez has given workshops on "How to Apply to Medical School," "Writing the Personal Statement," and "Issues in Medicine." He has used these opportunities to discuss the importance of primary care and the need for physicians dedicated to practicing Family Medicine. Along with Joel, Mish Mizrahi and Diana Nguyen have also used their positions as Medical School Tour Guides to speak to medical school candidates about our chapter of Family Medicine, as well as explain to them the purpose and goals of our group. In this way, we hope to recruit members even before they are officially admitted to our medical school.
Harbor-UCLA Summer Urban Fellowship
The Harbor-UCLA Summer Urban Fellowship Program is a six-week fellowship headed by Dr. Gilberto Granados and Dr. Jyoti Puvvula, both exceptional Family Medicine physicians in the community. This program is unique because there are several components that encompass the principles of Family Medicine as a specialty. The focus of this program is to provide quality health care to the citizens of the Wilmington community in Lomita, CA. This community consists of predominately Latino, Spanish-speaking, working class people who may or may not have health insurance or even familiarity with accessing the health care system. The program's components include:
- Research: Conducting a door-to-door randomized cluster sample survey to determine the healthcare and health behaviors of children in the Wilmington community, culminating in the presentation of our findings
- Health Fairs: Providing health care screenings for almost 600 people over the course of two health fairs and providing a variety of medical services, including focused physical exams and educational health information on resources
- Mentoring: Serving as an excellent source of role models to all participants, as attending physicians and residents mentor the summer's participating medical students, who in turn mentor undergraduate and high school student participants
- Community Outreach: Increasing health awareness and empowering the community by giving talks to nearby elementary schools, local high schools, and the Boys and Girls Club
- Public Health Lecture Series: Providing participants insight to the current health care system through which patients must navigate successfully in order to receive adequate care, and through which we will be a part of in the future as we become health care professionals; topics include: Cross-cultural medicine, Working with the Underserved, Determinants of Health, The Social Gradient of Health, and Cultural Diversity in Caring for the Underserved
FMIG members, Scott Nass, Eric Fein and Voltaire Sinigayan, participated in this summer program and gained invaluable exposure to community service opportunities within the field of Family Medicine. Scott and Eric shared some of their experiences at the Summer Opportunities meeting held in January and have recruited several students to participate again this summer. It is outreach programs like these that our FMIG hopes to play deeper and more integral parts of in the following year.
LIGA Flying Doctors of Mercy
LIGA International is a non-profit organization that sends physicians, nurses, and other medical personnel to set-up free clinics in Mexico. Volunteers fly to sites in small, private planes for the weekend. UCLA medical student volunteers participate in a number of activities that include triage management, medical translation, history-taking, physical exams, and even assisting with surgical procedures. This past year, several FMIG members traveled to Mexico to assist LIGA in the provision of compassionate, free medical care to the underserved.
Student Run Homeless Clinics
Several of our FMIG officers and members are active participants at our student run clinics. The clinics are located in West Hollywood, Los Angeles, and Santa Monica, CA. They provide free health services, including general exams, school and camp physicals for children, HIV testing, flu vaccines and immunizations for homeless adults, families and children in the Los Angeles area.
Tar Wars
February 16, 2007
Hoover Street Elementary School
Los Angeles, CA
Coordinators: Mish Mizrahi, MSII and Diana Nguyen, MSII
Participants: Jose Avalos, MSIV; Lisa Ly, MSIV; Zach Morairty, MSIV; Scott Nass, MSII; Voltaire Sinigayan, MSII; Jennifer Lau, MSII; Maureen Villasenor, MSII; Neda Jafarian, MSII; Candace Dawes, MSII, Alvin Rivera, Melinda Perlo
"Introduction / Recruitment"
Primary Care Week
This year, we launched Tar Wars, the tobacco-free education program for kids created by the American Academy of Family Physicians, at UCLA. Although we kept to the AAFP guidelines, we approached the event in a unique way as a year-long effort to implement preventive health education at the community level. We introduced the program and began recruitment for the event during our FMIG Primary Care Week in November 2006, where we gave a broad overview and timeline of the program. As part of this introduction to a topic commonly discussed between patients and their family physicians, the project coordinators presented the material as an opportunity to contribute to the well-being of children who had not yet made the decision to try tobacco. Medical students were encouraged to examine the topic from the perspective of someone in elementary school, who would likely be comparing COPD or asthma exacerbations to the difficulty inherent in breathing through a straw. Integral to our recruitment success was showcasing the incredible posters created by previous contest winners to personalize the positive impact facilitated by Tar Wars.
"Training Session"
On February 9, 2007, we held a training session for all students who expressed interest in the Tar Wars Program. This lunchtime workshop included a presentation on the components of the classroom curriculum and a role-playing exercise, followed by a practice run-through; two medical students acted as Tar Wars presenters, while the remainder of the pretended to be 4th and 5th grade students.
"The Event"
On February 16, 2007, eleven UCLA medical students gave the Tar Wars presentation to five 4th and 5th grade classrooms at Hoover Street Elementary School, located in the historically underserved Pico Union area of town, often labeled the "Ellis Island" of Los Angeles because of the predominance of Hispanic families settling there after entering the country. The presentation covered topics including the prevalence of smoking, the short-term effects of smoking, a simulation of what it feels like to be short of breath, the financial implications of using tobacco products, reasons people use tobacco, and how tobacco is advertised. The presentation ended with an introduction to the Tar Wars Poster Contest, a competition where students would each create an original poster that reaffirms the Tar Wars message.
"Wrap-Up Session"
Immediately following the classroom sessions, the medical student volunteers gathered on the playground outside to discuss and debrief on the day's event. The feedback was incredibly positive and provided several helpful suggestions to improve the organization and flow of future sessions. Overall, participating medical students felt it was a very rewarding session.
"Poster Contest"
We returned to Hoover Street Elementary three weeks later and collected the students' posters. Subsequently, the Tar Wars presenters voted for the 1st and 2nd place posters from the nearly thirty submissions. The 1st place winner received 4 movie vouchers and entry into the state Tar Wars competition. The 2nd place winner received 2 movie vouchers. Both posters are displayed below.
"Future Events"
We had such a positive experience teaching the students that we are planning a second trip out to Hoover Street Elementary before the end of the year. We hope Tar Wars will be a program that next year's FMIG board continues to schedule on the calendar as a longitudinal experience throughout the year. It proved to be a wonderful way to reach out to our community and help motivate future Tobacco-Free Champions.