This program helps children reduce their anxiety about visits to the doctor, relieves apprehension over hospital visits, teaches good health habits, and promotes safety among pre-school children. The program consists of the following steps:
Medical students visit local area pre-schools and elementary schools.
A general presentation by two medical students which involves:
A "hands on" demonstration of basic physicians' instruments.
Introducing "Ralph," a three foot teddy bear with a leg cast.
Showing the children actual bones and pictures from gross anatomy.
Talking to the children about good health and safety habits.
The children are split into six or seven small groups, each facilitated by a medical student. The children have a chance to handle and practice using the instruments, demystifying doctor visits.
Information from a variety of area health organizations is distributed and discussed with the students. These include pamphlets on poison control, fire safety, dental and nutrition information. Solicit "goodies" from area businesses (Toys'R Us, bookstores, etc.) to distribute when you close the presentation.
Medical students who participate in this program will not only disseminate valuable medical information, they will also enhance the reputation of physicians, as role models and care givers, in the eyes of the young children. In addition, the program will help integrate medical students and the community where they are studying.
This program allows medical students to go into 4th through 6th grade classrooms to share basic health information. If your state requires that a health education component be included in the grade school curriculum, you can coordinate your project to help fulfill this requirement. The presentation includes:
Who a doctor is and what he or she does to become a doctor.
What the body systems are and how they interact in a healthy or sick person.
What a doctor does to assess health and illness.
Perform non-invasive personal exams of the students consisting of blood pressure, pulse, respiratory rate and reflexes.
The presentation can be done comfortably by four medical students for each class. Designate a group leader to:
Assure the teacher is contacted to verify the date and time.
Arrange for health models/posters, overhead projector and any other necessary equipment be set up in the room before the presentation.
Determine directions to the school.
Lead the presentation.
Points to remember:
Check to see whether your state's department of education permits discussion of sexually transmitted diseases and birth control with students below the 6th grade level.
You should budget two hours for the presentation (20- 30 minutes for lesson/presentation, 20 minutes for questions/answers and one hour to work with small groups).
You are not doing a health screening; any health concerns should be referred to school health personnel or the teacher.
If the children use your medical equipment, be sure that proper hygiene is maintained (i.e., alcohol wipes are supplied in the bags to clean the ear plugs on the stethoscope between uses).
This project develops a health calendar which serves as an educational tool for patients at local primary care clinics. The calendar incorporates twelve health care themes for the perinatal and preschool period with a complete phone list of primary care services in the community, as well as numbers of national hotlines for specific concerns. General and community specific information is offered. General advice can be obtained from a variety of sources such as, The Wellness Guide, Your Child's Healthwise Handbook, and Two Worlds: A Calendar and Health Guide for Parents. Community specific information can be obtained by research of community-based resources.
In planning the artwork for your project, consider using materials created by the children in your community. Your school district will probably be happy to help you with this. Any desktop publishing software will be sufficient to produce the calendar. You should keep the ethnic makeup of your community in mind. If it includes a large Hispanic population you may want to do calendars in Spanish and English.
The neighborhood health fair provides an opportunity to deliver basic primary and preventive health services to underserved communities in your town. Often the residents lack access to these services because of financial constraints, lack of child care and inability to take time off from work. One of the most efficient ways for you to assist in providing easy access to essential screenings for this population is to start working with community health centers and other groups already delivering these services.
Medical tests should be free and include the following:
Physical exams, cholesterol and blood pressure screenings, urine glucose tests, eye exams, and dental check-ups.
Nutritional counseling and health education on breast self-examination, diabetes, sexually transmitted diseases and HIV infection.
Necessary immunizations and the tuberculin skin test for children.
If you plan to serve primarily an immigrant population, this health fair may represent their first contact with any type of health care in the U.S. For others, the health fair provides ready access to frequently neglected services such as mammograms and facilitates the scheduling of follow up appointments.
The spectrum of services the health fair offers means you will need to enlist volunteer assistance from allied health students, so do not forget the dental, nursing, and optometry students in your area. Finally, you will need to arrange oversight of the health fair's activities by licensed physicians.
The purpose of your women's health clinic will be to provide health education, preventive health services and family planning to indigent or homeless women who lack the resources to obtain these services elsewhere.
The services you can offer include a preliminary health class on female health issues and a review of what she can expect during her physical exam. The class will be followed by a health clinic where patients can have a full physical exam. Any condition requiring further evaluation will be referred to the local health department or a participating referral source.
Steps to implementation:
1. Investigate need: meet and discuss the idea and proposed structure with medical students, with women's shelters (either homeless or specifically domestic violence), with the health department, physicians and residents.
2. Solicit sponsors: pursue assistance and/or participation from the clinical departments most closely allied to the clinic's focus (family medicine, OB/GYN, etc...), AMA-MSS, Federation (state and local medical societies), AMWA, resident groups, allied health and miscellaneous groups (nursing, social work, pre-meds, etc...).
3. Establish structure: where to operate (an existing homeless shelter or clinic), when to operate (consider the schedules of all involved), and how to operate (contract with the health department and the volunteer services of physicians to oversee patient care).
4. Determine what services to provide and how to pay for them: funding (see below), lab (Roche Biochemical, National Health Lab, etc...), and referrals (Breast Clinic, OB/GYN, local hospitals and the health department).
Design your health class to achieve the following goals:
Prepare the women for a physical examination. Alleviate their anxiety about the examination. Describe health maintenance skills. Discuss sexually transmitted diseases and explore contraceptive options.
The health clinic will offer the following basic screening medical services and referral assistance to indigent women under the direct supervision of a licensed physician:
Through this program students build awareness in the medical community of the need for bone marrow transplants and conduct their own HLA typing bone marrow donor drive. For the educational segment schedule two lectures:
1. "Stories from a Transplant Unit," will introduce the medical aspects of bone marrow transplantation through patient examples. You should invite a hematologist/oncologist with appropriate experience to conduct this session.
2. "Psychological Aspects of Bone Marrow Transplantation," can be led by a psychiatric consultant to a bone marrow transplant service. In order to illustrate how to handle the emotional impact of transplantation, the consultant can interview a child recipient and his/her mother, as well as an adult recipient, about their experiences. These interviews can be followed with a discussion of how unit staff respond to marrow transplantation.
You should then schedule the HLA typing drive to build on the interest developed by your lectures. You can invite a commercial lab to do the typing and ask them underwrite some of the cost as their support for this community service project.
For more information, brochures and other assistance contact:
National Marrow Donor ProgramFinally, a program evaluation will help you learn what was most effective in the presentations and HLA typing drive, how to better engage the interest of future audiences and what additional topics participants would like to see addressed.
You can observe National Organ Donor Awareness Week (in April) by developing an afternoon program which educates members of your community about organ donation and living wills. The opening presentation should address the commonly asked questions about organ donation. Your hospital's transplant coordinator can describe the process and illustrate the need for transplantable organs. National or local organ procurement groups can also supply you with speaker alternatives. This presentation can be supplemented by testimonials of a transplant recipient and a transplant donor.
Select an organ and invite a technician from a local organ bank to detail the donation process for a specific organ. The presentation will reaffirm the growing gap between potential transplant recipients and the supply of transplantable organs.
Your third presentation should be given by a lawyer who can explain the mechanics of a living will and the concept behind durable power of attorney. This segment will build on the first two by providing a means for individuals to personally commit to being potential organ donors, the first step for increasing mainstream acceptance. Finally, schedule time for a question and answer period and provide refreshments and light food at the program's end.
To encourage wider dissemination of the organ transplantation message have your chapter staff a booth at a good campus location for the course of the week to distribute literature and field questions.
There are extensive resources available to help you develop your program. A comprehensive Organ Donor Awareness program module can be obtained free from the DMSS. Additional materials, including organ donation topics for the medical school curriculum, are available from the United Network for Organ Sharing, by calling (804) 330-8541.
The purpose of this program is to provide free blood pressure screenings and education about modifiable risk factors for hypertension and heart disease to your community.
To provide first and second year students with an opportunity to gain experience interacting with people in a clinical setting.
To increase community awareness of your AMA-MSS chapter.
The program involves establishing an exhibit booth in a local shopping center. This booth will be set up for two hours on each of two consecutive afternoons. You should plan to have the booth staffed by six to eight first and second year students, supervised by one or two MSS chapter officers. These students will take shoppers' blood pressures when they so request, recording observed blood pressures on pamphlets given to the shoppers. These pamphlets (available from the American Red Cross) contain information on modifiable risk factors for hypertension, as well as describing its relationship to cardiovascular disease and other illnesses. Shoppers exhibiting higher than normal blood pressures will be counseled to make follow up visits to their personal physicians.
Good months to schedule hypertension screenings are February - American Heart Month and May - National High Blood Pressure Month. A team of this size working a good location can screen up to 150 persons over a couple of afternoons. You should track your total number of contacts so you can evaluate changes to the time or location of your exhibit.
Through this program medical students can help individuals quit smoking or, particularly with younger audiences, not start smoking. There are many resources available to help you tailor your program to your audience. The message is still timely - 1993 reversed a historic trend of fewer Americans smoking. Suggested resources are listed here:
American Medical Association, (800) 262-3211 "Tobacco Free Society" Physician Leadership Kit, x4416
"How to Quit," a program which is part of the AMA National Wellness Stop-Smoking Campaign and is available for $49.99 by calling (800) 951-1199
National Cancer Institute, (800) 422-6237
Office on Smoking and Health, Technical Information Center 5600 Fishers Lane, Park Building, Room 1-16 Rockville, MD 20857 (301) 443-1690
National Cancer Society, (800) 227-2345 [Can put you in touch with your state affiliate]
Doctors Ought to Care, (404) 721-2269
There are several ways to structure your program:
Enlist a volunteer physician who wants to create a smoke-free office and set up a "stop smoking" schedule for his or her patients that smoke. Template available from the California Medical Association, Target Intervention - How To Help Your Patients Stop Smoking, at (415) 882-5163.
Schedule a smoke-out for your community. Provide resources and support for individuals who want to quit smoking.
Make smoking prevention the focus of a health education outreach program for elementary and junior high students.