The Case-Based Teaching in Social Medicine Project is supported by the American Medical Association’s Accelerating Change in Medical Education Innovation Grants Program. We are soliciting case submissions from trainees in the health professional schools to produce a compendium of at least 20 social medicine teaching cases in 2019. Our social medicine approach is rooted in the structural competency framework. We are particularly interested in cases that highlight the impact of social determinants of health on patient care and interventions by clinical teams on the individual, systems and/or community levels to address systemic causes of health inequities.
Taking a detailed and appropriate social history is often overlooked in the hospital admission process or in the outpatient setting, and it is particularly relevant to your social medicine case submission. Besides asking about tobacco, alcohol, drugs, and sexual partners, knowing whether patients can afford medications, nutritious food, housing, and transportation and whether there is help at home is critical to developing a plan of care. For additional information about the social history, read this article by Behforouz et al. A variety of social needs screening tools are available such as the Health-Related Social Needs (HRSN) tool and the Health Leads Toolkit.
If your case submission is accepted, you will be awarded a $100 prize with commitment to work with a faculty and a community mentor to further develop the case for publication on our website. Once published, educators and trainees everywhere can access the case.
The submission will follow the following format: 1) case synopsis, 2) important aspects of the patient’s social history including negative and positive/protective social/behavioral determinants, 3) barriers and challenges to good health from the perspectives of the patient, health system and/or community/society, 4) Actions/solutions to address these barriers, 5) lessons learned, ways forward.
Click here to start your submission
There is no deadline. We accept case submissions on a continuous basis.
Additional information regarding the submission process is available, including case selection and publication.