The Alpert Medical School's Department of Family Medicine received four federal grants totaling more than $4.4 million in September. This funding, spaced out in $900,000 increments over five years, will go toward improving family medical practice alongside further education and research.
The awards, announced by the Health Resources and Services Administration of the Department of Health and Human Services, will be allocated in different ways, said Dean of Medicine and Biological Sciences Edward Wing. One grant will involve research and faculty development, another will go to the Med School and the last two will cover residency education.
The grants "all deal with different areas based on curriculum models within the school," Wing said. "However, they're all equally important."
More specifically, the grants are intended to change the curriculum at the Med School for students studying primary care, improve education for residents, attract new teachers and improve communication and relations with health care providers in the area.
Wing emphasized the Med School's focus on primary care as an overarching theme.
"Primary care is the future of medicine," he said. "We have de-emphasized primary care in this country. Sixty percent of doctors in England provide immediate care for people in their region. The access is very good. In this country, many people have to go to expensive specialists that don't know the patients as well. Primary care is much more cost-effective and can pick up problems earlier."
The application process for the grants was a long process, Wing said, and it took HRSA months to make a decision regarding the awards.
The grants will stimulate education in the Med School's facilities as well. "The funding will help educate more students to care in community health centers which provide primary care," Wing said. This is especially influential for many of Brown's current and aspiring medical students, as "PLMEs comprise 50 percent of the medical school's class," he added.
Wing said he was hopeful that the grants would improve family practice. "These grants will help us teach better and are more innovative in helping us to design teaching offices." The Department of Family Medicine, based at Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island, will be able to benefit directly from the increased funding toward such methods, he said.
