Laying the foundation: a residency curriculum that supports informed advocacy by family physicians.

This is one of six short papers that describe additional innovations to help integrate public health into medical education; these were featured in the "Patients and Populations: Public Health in Medical Education" conference. They represent relatively new endeavors or curricular components that had not been explored in prior publications. Although evaluation data are lacking, it was felt that sharing a description of a longitudinal curriculum focused on the development of basic advocacy skills through practical activities in community assessment and engagement combined with legislative advocacy at the University of New Mexico would be of value to medical educators.

Changing hospital policy from the wards: an introduction to health policy education.

Although the need for physician participation in critiquing and setting health policies is great, physician participation in health policy activities is low. Many barriers hamper physician involvement, from limited time to ignorance of their potential roles, to minimal exposure to the issue during medical education. University of New Mexico School of Medicine family medicine residents and students on ward teams were trained to ask specific questions on rounds that framed individual patient encounters as windows into broader community health and policy issues.

Why obstetrics/gynecology, and what if it were not an option? A survey of resident applicants.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to assess the secondary residency choice of obstetrics/gynecology and family medicine residency applicants and to determine the most and least appealing aspects of each specialty.

Study Design: This prospective cohort study surveyed residency applicants in obstetrics/gynecology and family medicine from 2004-2007 at the University of New Mexico (obstetrics/gynecology and family medicine) and the University of California-San Francisco (obstetrics/gynecology). Applicants completed an anonymous 5-question survey about their secondary choice of specialty, least likely residency choice, and the most and least appealing aspects of their chosen specialty.

The impact on rural New Mexico of a family medicine residency.

Purpose: To determine the impact on rural New Mexico of the large, decentralized University of New Mexico (UNM) family medicine residency.

Method: A cross-sectional study was conducted of all 317 residency's graduates from 1974 to 2004. Location of current practice was correlated with the residents' gender, ethnicity, medical school of origin, and whether most training took place in the urban program or one of three rural programs.