A Community of Practice for Teaching the Social Determinants of Health in Undergraduate Medical Education
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Division of Hospital Medicine, Department of Medicine, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA; 2Institute for Global Health, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA; 3Department of Pediatrics, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA; 4Department of Medical Education, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA; 5Mary Ann & J. Milburn Smith Child Health Research, Outreach and Advocacy Center, Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA; 6Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
J Gen Intern Med DOI: 10.1007/s11606-019-05288-w © Society of General Internal Medicine 2019
D ear Editor, We are very appreciative of the enthusiastic response to our article, “Teaching the Social Determinants of Health in Undergraduate Medical Education: A Scoping Review,”1 and thank Drs. Abbie Dunn and Scott Mackenzie for sharing their knowledge and experience with implementing a multifaceted and longitudinal curriculum at their own institution.2 While we were careful not to overstate the implications of our review—in recognition that our findings were limited to published programs and research—we also believe that publication can be reflective of the maturity of a field and the priorities of the organizations to which practitioners belong. In other words, if educators are provided with the resources to not only run their programs well but also rigorously assess and benchmark them against peer institutions, then they are more likely to disseminate these practices through publication than those who do not receive such support. In this way, the published literature on teaching the social determinants of health (SDH) tells the story of how certain medical schools have elevated these issues, or in other cases, failed to do so. These choices affect the academic quality of SDH teaching overall. Critical to the continuous growth and improvement in this field is the ability to share curricular innovation and best practices, at any stage from design to evaluation, in venues outside of medical journals. At Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, we are honored to be members of the US-based
Received August 5, 2019 Revised August 5, 2019 Accepted August 8, 2019
National Collaborative for Education to Address the Social Determinants of Health (NCEAS).3 NCEAS is a resource library, research and policy think tank, and community of practice—all supporting the proliferation of SDH education, scholarship, and healthcare approaches developing across the country and around the world. Specifically, the NCEAS education collection invites submissions of detailed curricula, like the one that Drs. Dunn and Mackenzie describe.4 This collection aims to serve as a repository of resources for fellow educators to use when training learners about social and structural determinants of health. We welcome other passionate educators and healthcare providers to s
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