LA Harbor AHEC is housed at the Harbor-UCLA Department of Family Medicine which is part of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services Safety-net hospital system. The program has 36 family medicine trainees and it stands united in the belief that health care is a right, not a privilege. As such, the residents and faculty are committed to not only meeting the health needs of the communities they serve, but also to addressing the barriers that impact their quality of life in order to promote an equitable society.
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Our curriculum is forged so that resident physicians work with, and empower our most marginalized patients, whose major impediments to primary care are lack of financial resources and insurance. Our training sites are a living classroom, where our residents learn the skills needed to become excellent clinicians while working in medically underserved multicultural communities. The program recruits trainees who have a passion for working with underserved populations, and provides them the skills and tools needed to be excellent physicians, as well as community advocates and partners.
At least 50 percent of the graduates go on to work or continue their education in underserved practice settings. Family medicine residents go beyond the safety net clinics of the public county system to work and train in street medicine, work with high-risk youth in school-based clinics, provide community health education at several local urban inner-city high schools, work with individuals currently or formerly involved in the corrections system and those with substance use disorders.
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LA Harbor AHEC also supports a community health fellow who is a 4th-year post-graduate family medicine resident doing additional training in the community. Fellows focus on the care of a particular issue faced by a vulnerable population LA Harbor AHEC offers the Summer Urban Health Fellowship (SUHF) in conjunction with Harbor-UCLA Family Medicine.
The Harbor-UCLA SUHF is a 6-week pipeline program that brings together family medicine resident physicians, medical students, undergraduates/Post-baccalaureate, and high school students, majority of who are from communities traditionally underrepresented in medicine, with the goal of supporting them in their health professions journey and increasing their interest in primary care career specialties with a focus of working in Health professional shortage area (HPSAs). In this multilevel mentoring program, discover different health professions and shadow physicians working in safety net clinics in HPSAs.
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During the program, students learn about structural racism & vulnerabilities, health disparities, and issues facing underserved and marginalized communities. Fellows work in the community to organize health fairs, provide health education seminars and conduct community-based participatory research to assess the health needs of the community. They also learn tools of advocacy to bring forth social change. Many of the former SUHF fellows have continued to become medical students and train at our program.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT PROJECT COORDINATOR, JOSELYNE CAMACHO AT [email protected]