Illinois Medicine

campus news C H I C A G O P E O R I A R O C K F O R D U R B A N A - C H A M P A I G N FRONT LINES OF CARE Family Medicine program gets $2M to expand, focus on underserved areas Human Services. The grant will fund two additional residents each year for the next five years. Currently the department has six residents in each of the program's three training years. The grant will enable the pro- T gram to enhance teaching in health communication, health literacy, global health and women's health, as well as expand the resident scholarship program. "We will be able to refine and improve our curriculum, with a focus on training more providers with the special skills needed to provide quality care to underserved populations," says Memoona Hasnain, MD, MHPE, PhD, director of research and assis- tant professor of public health in family medicine. According to Hasnain, the pro- gram's goal is to inculcate residents with the core competencies, attitudes and values needed to provide high- quality, culturally appropriate care to all patients, particularly those who are underserved. Half of the department's resi- dency graduates in the last six years have practices located in areas that are designated as being medically underserved by the federal Health Resources and Services Administration, and 90 percent continue to practice primary care, observes Mark Potter, MD, residency director and associate professor of clinical family medicine. "We'll be putting these new residents into specific areas where we already work," Potter says. One central element of the new residents' training will be the opportunity to work at the University of Illinois' Mile Square Health Center (see sidebar below)— which provides care on Chicago's West Side—throughout the three years of their residency training. "Learning to work with the com- munity they are serving is an important aspect of the training offered by UIC," Potter says. "The selection of trainees with potential for this work, coupled with training in [serving those in need] throughout residency training, increas- es the likelihood that our graduates will go on to provide primary care to underserved populations." MILE SQUARE HONORED FOR EXCELLENCE M Health Center receives heart failure recognition ILE SQUARE HEALTH CENTER HAS BEEN NAMED an Illinois Your Healthcare Plus top performer for excellence in caring for patients with heart failure. Recognized for achieving high marks in commonly noted measures of quality, Mile Square operates four clinics in underserved Chicago neighborhoods, four school-based health centers associated with the UIC School of Public Health and three UIC College of Nursing sites that provide primary care to patients with chronic mental illness. Your Healthcare Plus cited Mile Square's strategic management of patients with heart failure. "Mile Square has set a strong example for quality care," says Carrie Nelson, MD, medical director of Your Healthcare Plus, a Medicaid pro- gram that coordinates care for people with chronic illnesses. "That's good for our health system and for the people of Illinois." "We are honored to receive this distinguished recognition," says Henry Taylor, director of Mile Square. "To be recognized for providing high-quality care to medically underserved high-risk patient populations is our primary goal." 6 | SUMMER 2 011 HE COLLEGE OF MEDI- CINE will expand its family residency program in July with the support of a $1.92 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and

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