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Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

Genes to Society: A Curriculum for the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Primary Care Leadership Track

The mission of the Primary Care Leadership Track (PCLT) is to train and empower a group of medical students to be compassionate and clinically skilled primary care clinicians, innovators, team leaders, and advocates for their patients and communities. We support students to explore dimensions of primary care early in their training as they consider the ways they will ultimately serve in medicine.

The Primary Care Leadership Track includes:

  • Workshops: both to attend and to lead, 1 required each year
  • Mentorship
  • 3-year clinical attachment: Assignment to PCLT clinical sites for completion of the LAC plus the opportunity to return to those sites ½ day per month (minimum 2 sessions required every 6 months) through December of M4 year to provide the opportunity to develop longer relationships with patients and see chronic disease management
  • Primary Care oriented SC project
  • Support for electives and attending primary care-oriented meetings
  • Annual retreat and leadership skills training
  • Annual Reid Lecture and Induction Ceremony

Course Objectives

By the end of this course students will be able to:

  1. Identify the challenges and opportunities involved in providing primary care to communities in a variety of service delivery models and settings
  2. Identify their own spheres of influence and effective means to advocate for patients and communities
  3. Demonstrate refined skills in advanced communication, relationship building, preventative care practices, and acute and chronic disease management in the primary care setting

Program Director

Dr. Colleen Christmas, MD - Baltimore, MD - Geriatric Medicine
Associate Professor of Medicine
Division of Geriatric Medicine, JHUSOM
Rosemarie Hope Reid MD Professor of the Primary Care Leadership Track
Governor, Maryland Chapter of the American College of Physicians

Time Commitment and Program Length

The PCLT is introduced to the first-year students and a call for applications is issued in the fall. After interviews a committee selects 10 first year students to begin the PCLT in January each year. Students participate in the track through December of their 4th year of medical school.