Healthy Equity and Social Emergency Medicine Fellowship

Overview

Goal: The GW Health Equity and Social Emergency Medicine fellowship should prepare a participant to become a leader in advancing equity and improving population health through research, advocacy, and structurally competent clinical practice. They will also gain skills in developing collaboration between community services and healthcare and educating others in health equity practice.

Graduates will gain training in four key areas to advance health equity: administrative, educational, research and policy/advocacy, and graduate with necessary skills to facilitate career advancement in at least one of the four key areas.

Components of Curriculum include:

1. Proficiency in basic understanding of key topics of Health Equity and Social EM:
   • Violence mitigation (including interpersonal and firearm violence)
   • Food Insecurity
   • Financial Insecurity, Education and Employment
   • Housing and Homelessness
   • Substance Use Disorders
   • Immigration and Documentation
   • Justice Involvement
   • Gender and Sexual minority status
   • Language and Cultural Barriers
   • Race and Gender
   • Human Trafficking
   • The Built Environment
   • Legal Needs and Medical Legal Partnerships
   • Insurance and Access to Care
   • Implicit and Explicit Bias
   • Disability
      
2. Monthly multi-institutional Journal Clubs focused on review of current health equity and social EM literature.
    
3. Longitudinal project in at least one of the following domains:
   • Administrative -- the development of fundamental skills that will allow fellows to evolve as leaders in using the unique position of the emergency department or family medicine clinic to improve health equity through improved clinical practice, education, programming, or dissemination of public health interventions for the community. This may include expertise in creating systematic interventions like social needs screening programs, linkages to health and social care, collaborating amongst community and healthcare institutions, and other appropriate topics to improve population health.
      
   • Education – the development and implementation of educational interventions to allow fellows to evolve as leading educators in health equity or social EM. This may include establishing expertise in key areas of health equity content with educational materials developed by fellows that can be used to advance health equity knowledge at various levels.
      
   • Research – the development of fundamental skills in clinical, public health, and/or translational research to allow fellows to evolve as leading researchers in health equity. This can include the development and design of a focused research question and study implementation related to health equity, in addition to research training, training in design and conduct of clinical trials, training in writing and reviewing scientific manuscripts, and training in grant writing.
      
   • Policy/Advocacy – the development of fundamental skills in advocating for and critiquing policies that affect marginalized and vulnerable populations frequenting the emergency department. This can include involvement of advocacy work through ACEP or SAEM, local, state or national public health departments and legislatures, editorial writing, and social media campaigns.
      

4. Coursework at the GW Milken Institute School of Public Health. Fellows will participate in at least two courses per year of fellowship. Ideally courses selected will be tailored based on individual fellow’s background and project goals. Possible options include:

   • Introduction to Biostatistics for Public Health
   • Biostatistical Applications for Public Health
   • Fundamentals of Public Health Program Evaluation
   • Epidemiologic Methods I: Design of Health Studies
   • Applied Epidemiologic Data Analysis
   • Cost Benefit Analysis in HC
   • Social and Behavioral Science Research Methods
   • Preventing Health Disparities
   • Applied Longitudinal Data Analysis for Public Health Research
   • Study Design & Evaluation Methods
      

   If the fellow wants to obtain a Masters in Public Health, Public Policy, Education or other Masters degree offered by the School of Public Health this can be considered on an individual basis.

5. Clinical EM Attending shifts at United Medical Center, the only District of Columbia government hospital in the city, serving the most disadvantaged patients in Washington D.C. in wards 7 & 8. Approximately 6-8 shifts per month.