Health internship focuses on local area

Working in the Family Planning Clinic at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, medical student Jane Sharp gained insight into the values, motivations and beliefs behind the sexual activity of women and teens in West Philadelphia. A second-year student at the University's Medical School, Sharp plans to practice women's health care when she graduates. Her participation in the two-year-old Community Health Summer Internship Program afforded her a hands-on opportunity to assess the issues regarding female sexuality and reproduction in inner cities. Initiated in the summer of 1991 by medical students Cindy Weinbaum and Steve Chapman, the Community Health Summer Internship Program allows students between their first and second years of medical school to become more familiar with the medical needs and problems in their community. The University's Med School curriculum requires that students spend the majority of their time in the classroom. But there is only so much one can learn from a textbook. Chapman said he thinks that students aspiring to be physicians need more opportunities to practice primary care in the community. "Students come to medical school because they feel an obligation to help their community," Chapman said. "We can learn a lot more working with teenage mothers than with mice." "The program allows students to realize that problems are not insurmountable," said Lucy Tuton, a faculty coordinator. "This hands-on opportunity can make an impact on the problems in the community." The students learn more from their hands-on involvement in the community than they do working in the laboratory, Sharp said. Sharp said she learned that the teenage pregnancy epidemic in West Philadelphia is not entirely due to ignorance and lack of resources. "The male/female conceptualization of sexuality and parenthood are also significant factors," Sharp said. Student Co-coordinator Mikhail Sekeres said he believes that medical students play a unique role in their communities. Sekeres said that students know medicine but have not been in the medical community long enough to be tainted by the cynicism of medical professionals. "We still have the naive attitude that we can change the world," Sekeres said. "The public trusts medical students more than professionals to provide them with health care benefits." The internship program also allows students to expand on work done under existing University projects. Under the guidance of Director of Community Partnerships Ira Harkavy, founder of the West Philadelphia Improvement Corps, Med School student Seth Mandel continued the undergraduate work he started at Turner Middle School. Mandel's spent last summer educating adolescents about preventive health measures regarding hypertension and diabetes. "The students learned that they can't live like they're immortal," Mandel said. "In order to prevent getting sick, they would have to do something about it at an early age." In 1991, 18 students from the Med School participated in the program. Last summer was the first time the University had full collaboration with the Philadelphia College of Medicine, Hahnemann University and the Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University. The collaborative effort focuses on medical ethnography. In the study, the students investigate how West Philadelphia and Germantown residents view medicine so that they can appropriately address the community's health needs. Students and faculty said they hope to extend the program to Temple University and the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine next summer. By volunteering in homeless shelters, soup kitchens, housing projects, health centers, summer camps and schools, the interns learned which resources -- medical, recreational, educational and social -- were available outside a hospital setting. "Learning about the community's resources early on in their medical careers is a vital part of medical students' educations in terms of individual knowledge and patient care," Sarah Sadaah, 1992 student co-coordinator, said. On November 30, the students will have an opportunity to exhibit what they learned and accomplished over the summer. Each student will present a three foot by six foot poster summarizing their efforts and results. The poster presentation will be held on the second floor hall of the John Morgan building and is open to the general public.

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