Scholarly Concentration in "Public Health and Community Service"

Overview

All 1st year medical students in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine must select a particular “scholarly concentration” as a requirement. One option that students can choose to participate in is a Scholarly Concentration in “Public Health and Community Service.” The main goal of this Scholarly Concentration is for students to develop expertise in a specific area of public health related work (service, policy, or research) in a local, national, or international setting. Students will participate in seminars designed to prepare them for making contributions to improving the health of communities and populations at risk of having poor health outcomes.

Requirements

Each student will be required to complete a project that could be service-oriented (e.g., working with a community-based organization to assist in the design, implementation, and/or evaluation of a community-based program), policy-oriented (e.g., working in a governmental health policy office to participate in the analysis of public health policy issues), or research-oriented (e.g., working with a faculty member or outside investigator to study a public health problem). 

For community-based projects, students should have a community-based advisor in addition to having a faculty advisor. Each student will be expected to work with the advisor(s) to prepare a proposal for the project, specifying the rationale, specific objective, planned methods, and expected product. The advisor(s) will oversee the student’s work on the project. 

Timeline

In most cases, students will spend about 8 weeks of full-time effort on the project during the summer after their first year of medical school. Additional options would be for students to spend several hours per week working on the community-based project throughout the academic year. Upon completion of the project, each student will be required to submit a final report and give a presentation.