“Service is ingrained in our culture”

"As both a public servant and pediatric neurologist, I have made children's health a priority. Eastern Virginia Medical School works equally diligently... I am proud to endorse EVMS for the AAMC Spencer Foreman Award for Outstanding Community Service."

That text is from a letter by Virginia's Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, MD (MD '84), Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, in support of EVMS' application for a national community-service award, presented each November by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). Although the school didn't win this year, EVMS was chosen as one of three finalists.

Our Culture of Community Service

"Community service is ingrained in our culture," says Richard Homan, MD, President and Provost and Dean of the School of Medicine, referring to EVMS' founding in 1973 by a grass-roots effort of the community. "But recently we have codifed that service ethos in two key ways, and I believe that contributed to our selection as a finalist."

One way, Dr. Homan explains, is by formally integrating community service into education through a service-learning curriculum. Another way is through the 2012 establishment of the M. Foscue Brock Institute for Community and Global Health, which provides a mechanism for engaging with community partners around key health needs.

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This is Hampton Roads

"When it comes to community service, EVMS has an embarrassment of riches," says Cynthia Romero, MD (MD '93), Director of the Brock Institute and former Virginia Health Commissioner. "Narrowing down the focus of our award application took a month's worth of meetings."

In July, four members of the AAMC award-selection committee spent a day visiting EVMS. They viewed videos and had presentations by faculty and staff during a bus tour that gave them a first-hand look at EVMS' community-service efforts. The tour went through a Portsmouth neighborhood served by a Healthy Communities program; out to Suffolk to meet a patient at Western Tidewater Free Clinic, which was co-founded by an EVMS professor; and back to Norfolk's Young Terrace subsidized-housing community, where EVMS students volunteer at an elementary school.

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The EVMS Impact

The AAMC visitors also learned about HOPES Free Clinic, the first student-run free clinic in Virginia; Beyond Clinic Walls, an outreach project in which students make home visits to underserved elderly clients; CINCH (Consortium for Infant and Child Health), a 200-member health coalition led by EVMS Pediatrics' Division of Community Health and Research; and the Maury Medical and Health Specialties Program, a 30-year partnership with Norfolk Public Schools.

"Being selected as a finalist for this award," Dr. Homan says, "shows we're making great progress toward our vision of being the most community-oriented school of medicine and health professions in the nation."