HIPHOP: Community Health Initiative

Community Health Navigation is a physicianship first-year medical school curriculum clinical selective. Students will participate in a clinical visit, conduct social needs screening, and provide community resources to patients in collaboration with the physicians and community health workers at Eric B. Chandler Health Center.

Transition of Care is a physicianship first-year medical school curriculum clinical selective. Students will participate in clinical visits at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, conduct social needs screening, provide community resources to patients in collaboration with the physicians, and do follow-up calls, if applicable. Students also attend Medical Teaching Service Interdisciplinary Rounds.

Health workshops is integrated into the physicianship first-year medical school curriculum for students to build collaborative relationships with community partners. First-year medical students research, comprise, and present one health workshop in collaboration with community site partners and their group peers. These sites include Open Doors, a drug abuse rehabilitation center; Dina’s Dwelling, permanent housing for domestic violence survivors, women, and their children; Youth Advocacy Program, and many more community sites. Students will be trained by CHEC student coordinators. Staff and faculty orient students on how to research, collaborate, and present workshops addressing issues derived from community partners' introduction/brainstorming meetings. Workshops including but not limited to substance abuse, tobacco, nutrition, exercise, and sexual health and responsibility, are presented and anecdotally evaluated.

Project Outreach offers numerous short-term and long-term volunteer opportunities to medical, physician assistant, social work, and public health students, as well as Robert Wood Johnson Medical School faculty and staff throughout the entire school year. Participants can volunteer and/or assist with our Annual 5K Run, Science Health Day, and our drives for back-to-school and winter clothing and toiletries. Volunteers can serve at local soup kitchens, assist with blood pressure screening at community health fairs, teddy bear check-ups, counting the homeless, and much more.

Students work with the program director to support current and create new initiatives, both virtual and on-site. Current projects include Wellness Warriors, Road to Success, Medication Safety, Project SCHEL, and more.

This service elective includes several community-centered advocacy and support programs and/or collaborations. Some examples of programs and/or collaborations include:

• Students shadow a patient and their health care team while serving as a patient advocate and health educator at the Robert Wood Johnson AIDS Program. Students also attend the program’s healthcare team meetings.
• Students attend an ICCUCE lecture to educate them about at-risk populations.
• Students can also participate in the MEDTalks series.

A series of didactic sessions held at the medical school. Some sessions are in collaboration with Robert Wood Johnson Medical School student organizations. All didactic sessions are focused on issues that are prevalent in underserved communities. Students who participate in these sessions will receive a notation on their transcript upon completion of meeting ICCUCE and/or SIRCH elective requirements. SIRCH is a prerequisite for a Distinction in Community Service.  

Students in this program are trained to provide health literacy workshops related to exercise, nutrition, heart-healthy behaviors, heart-related conditions, healthy habits and lifestyles, and will end with an integrative review and anecdotal evaluation. The program was developed in order to provide a collaborative forum in which students and community members could interact while enhancing proficiency in each others’ language, understanding of their varied cultures, and how these experiences may enhance overall health care relationships for future health providers and patients.

Students in this program are trained to present two sessions of interactive workshops on topics relating to HIV/AIDS and sexual health and responsibility at community-based organizations and public schools.

Gold

Maria B. Pellerano and Peter Montague
Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program/Steve Levin, MD, and Renee Levin
The Levine Family

Silver

Carol Terregino, MD
Iris G. Udasin, MD
Stress Factory Comedy Club

Bronze

Dan Mehan
Deborah M. Spitalnik, John R. Weingart, and Jeffrey Levine, MD
Heidi L. Copeland
Raritan Valley YMCA
Peiris Family

Friends

Stop & Shop (Somerset & Highland Park)
Target (Watchung)
Dunkin Donuts (Somerset)
Hansel and Griddle
Starbucks
Sam I Am Bagels
Duck Donuts