Our core urban health (UH) curriculum features essential experiences that help our residents address the health disparities affecting our community. All residents complete our UH core curriculum. These community partnerships provide additional context to understanding the challenges patients face in an urban environment and empower residents with the knowledge, skills, and tools to make meaningful change toward health equity. The residents apply what they learn on their core UH rotations to their clinical practice, advocacy efforts, and scholarly work.

• Addiction Medicine: Residents participate in a 4-week rotation. Residents perform universal screening, incorporate evidence-based practices for early intervention, make appropriate patient referrals to specialized treatment programs, and practice treating opioid addiction with sublingual buprenorphine in the primary care setting. The residents complete the required x-waiver training and use their knowledge and experiences to care for patients with substance use disorders in their own clinic at East Baltimore Medical Center.
• Psychiatry: Residents participate in a 2-week rotation. They receive enhanced psychiatry education emphasizing diagnosis of major adult psychiatric illnesses, outpatient treatment of major depression, identification of patients with dual diagnoses, and assessment of patients at risk for violent or suicidal behavior. The rotation includes outpatient, emergency department, and consult service experiences.
• Outpatient HIV/Hep C Care: During the four-week rotation, residents care for adult patients infected with HIV and/or Hepatitis C in Johns Hopkins Bartlett Center and Chase Brexton, a federally qualified health center. Residents learn about the ambulatory approach to HIV and Hepatitis C including the inter-professional teamwork that is required to provide comprehensive care. Some residents use this experience as part of certification as an HIV Specialist- https://aahivm.org/hiv-specialist
• Urban Community Medicine: During this 2-week rotation, residents learn methods to both minimize barriers to care and maximize care opportunities. Residents work with non-profits and advocacy organizations who are trying to decrease health disparities in our community. Residents finish the rotation with a much better understanding of the community resources available to our patients.
• Health Department (HD): The HD provides both clinical, policy, and program development experiences. Residents spend 2 weeks at the Baltimore County HD learning about the scope of clinical services, observing clinical programs, and contributing to policy and program development. Residents can also electively participate in the Baltimore City HD sponsored sexually transmitted disease clinics, tuberculosis program, and maternal-child health interventions.
• Health Care for the Homeless: Residents spend two weeks at HCH providing care in the clinic and participating in outreach when possible. HCH is a federally qualified health center that provides impressive wrap-around care for their patients including mental health care, addiction treatment, social work services, and housing-first options. The rotation is currently directed by one of our MP grads.
• Carceral Medicine- Many of our patients have personally faced incarceration or know someone who has. To appreciate how this affects the health of our patients, including those with addictions, residents provide care in the Baltiore City Detention Center. The detention center is blocks away from our continuity clinic.
• Geriatrics: Geriatrics is a required rotation for all MP programs, but we make sure it has a primary care focus. Over the month, residents learn the keys to providing great primary care for our geriatric population.
• Women’s Health: Through a relationship with Planned Parenthood of Maryland, residents learn about abortion care, contraception counseling and how to place LARCs, and the treatment of STIs.

Urban Health Electives

We supplement our core UH curriculum with a variety of UH electives.

• Chronic Pain
• Obesity
• Hospital to home transitions
• Leadership
• High-utilizer “hot-spotting” clinics
• Local Med-Peds practices
• Immigrant health
• Policy
  • Maryland Department of Health
  • Baltimore City Health Department
  • Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
  • Maryland Legislative Session
  • Health and Human Services
  • Federal government officials
• Transgender Medicine
• Visiting Elective Program to Promote Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Med-Peds
• Visiting 4th Year Medical Student Clerkship in the Department of Medicine