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About AMSA

Primary Care Interest Group

“It’s much more important to know what sort of patient has a disease than what sort of disease a patient has.”
-William Osler, Father of Modern Medicine

“Primary care brings promotion and prevention, cure and care together in a safe, effective and socially productive way at the interface between the population and the health system. The features of health care that are essential in ensuring improved health and social outcomes are person-centeredness, comprehensiveness and integration, and continuity care, with a regular entry into the health system, so that it becomes possible to build an enduring relationship of trust between people and their health care providers.”

“Primary Health Care - Now More Than Ever”
World Health Organization (WHO) Annual Report 2008

Get Involved

National Primary Care Week

NPCW is an annual event that highlights the importance of primary care. It is designed to bring health care professionals to the table to discuss and learn about the impact of primary care and interdisciplinary heath care, especially as they pertain to underserved populations.
 
The Patient Centered Medical Home

A model of health care delivery based on an ongoing personal relationship with a physician developed in collaboration by the American Academy of Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Physicians and the American Osteopathic Association which is designed to provide comprehensive primary care for people of all ages and medical conditions.
 
  • TransforMed is focused on practice redesign in an effort to create PCMH’s across the nation.
  • p4 (Preparing the Personal Physician for Practice) is a 6–year, 14-site, national comparative case study of a spectrum of innovations associated with the Patient-Centered Medical Home in family medicine residency training.
  • Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative: “A coalition of major employers, consumer groups, patient quality organizations, health plans, labor unions, hospitals, physicians and many others who have joined together to develop and advance the patient centered medical home”.

Resources

Online Resources

For Future Family Physicians…

American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP)

American College of Osteopathic Family Physicians (ACOFP)

For Future General Internists…

American College of Physicians (ACP)

American College of Osteopathic Internists (ACOI)

For Future Pediatricians…

American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)

American College of Pediatricians

National Health Service Corps (NHSC)

  • Scholarships
  • Loan Repayment Program: Federal & State
  • Educational Modules designed to help current & future clinicians begin to understand contemporary practice settings, cross-cultural issues and disease patterns.

Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC)

American Public Health Association

National Association of Community Health Centers

National Rural Health Association

CDC Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion

Journal of Primary Care

National Center for Primary Care at Morehouse School of Medicine

Projects-in-a-Box

These modules, produced by AMSA’s Generalist Physicians in Training initiative, are “designed to educate, provoke interest and help students develop opinions about important, timely issues in primary care medicine”. Catch up on the issues or use them to host events at your chapter. Here are just a few:

  • Cultural Competency in Medicine
  • The Delivery of Urban vs. Rural Health Care
  • The Future of International Health: Exporting Primary Care Medicine
  • Leadership Skills and Training
  • An Ounce of Prevention
  • The Primary Care Team
  • The Senior Boom is Coming: Are Primary Care Physicians Ready?

           
Books to Promote Discussions on Primary Care

  • The Social Transformation of American Medicine
    Winner of the 1983 Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize in American History.
    “One of the great values of this broad and comprehensive work is that it examines the various roads not taken in the development of American health-care systems; Starr would not be sorry, he writes, if his analyses of these roads 'served as a reminder that the past had other possibilities, and so do we today.' This volume serves that purpose admirably." (Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review. Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
     
  • A Textbook of Family Medicine
    "This is undoubtedly the most important publication on the discipline of family medicine, but more to the point, the concept of patient-centered care [proposed in the book] will recast medical care. This revolution, thanks to Dr. McWhinney, is well under way around the world." (Lynn Carmichael, M.D., Chair Emeritus, Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, University of Miami School of Medicine)
     
  • Doctoring: The Nature of Primary Care Medicine
    "Doctoring is a contribution of unexpected breadth--iconoclastic in conception and rich in insight. One can only hope that its words resonate in the minds of the nation's policy planners and in the hearts of our primary-care doctors." (Eric Cassell, The Wall Street Journal)
     
  • Big Doctoring in America: Profiles in Primary Care
    “In the words of GPs and other generalized caregivers, the author identifies the rewards and hassles of this type of practice. This theme has been treated in a more scholarly manner in several other publications, such as Promoting Human Wellness; however, Mullan's work, aimed at the general reader, underscores an important issue in American healthcare and makes a compelling statement. For larger public libraries.” (Margaret K. Norden, Marymount Univ. Lib., Arlington, Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Leadership

Emerald Screws
Emerald
Screws
Facilitator 		Sameen Farooq
Sameen Farooq
Premed Representative

AMSA's Listservs Have Moved - Join Us on InEx!

Inspiration Exchange

Members, come join the Inspiration Exchange (InEx) and communicate, collaborate & connect with fellow future physicians. Post to a discussion group, upload a document, blog, and network with your peers.

Save the Date!

AMSA's 61st Annual Convention

AMSA's 2011 Annual Convention & Exposition 

March 10-13, 2011 
Washington, DC 

Organize a Local Project

Local Chapter Projects
Need ideas for a local project at your school? See what other chapters around the world are doing. Or submit your school's local project to share with others.