24th National Conference: Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo Family Health Center Report on a Community-Based Medical Education Project

Last Updated on April 16, 2022 by Lee Burnett, DO, FAAFP

One of the central purposes of the National Conferences on Primary Health Care Access is to promote training of primary care physicians in community-oriented settings.

Over the years, the Conferences and their subsidiary National Conferences on Community Health Center-Primary Care Residency Linkages have highlighted major initiatives that promote this objective.

The passage of PPACA, through the provisions contained within it to promote the Teaching Health Center, has raised this important goal to the level of national policy and has encouraged institutions to develop new relationships for training physicians in care for needful populations.

On Wednesday, April 10th, the efforts to create such a new relationship will be examined.

Doctor Allan Wilke, a Senior Fellow of the National Conferences, has returned to his native Michigan to take part in the development of a new initiative in community-based medical education.

He will be joined by two officers of the Kalamazoo Family Health Center, its  the chief executive officer, Denise Crawford,  and medical director, Dr Carol Saffold.

The year 2012 was a landmark for the Kalamazoo Family Health Center, Western Medical University, and for the WMU family medicine residency program.

The Kalamazoo FHC, having received a federal grant for the purpose, doubled its clinical space and doubled its capacity for serving the community’s needy populations.

The family medicine residency program established a second clinical training site for its residents, allowing residency expansion.

The new Western Medical University medical school received provisional accreditation and permission to recruit medical students.

Dr Wilke offers the following as the theme of the presentation:

“A well-established family medicine residency program and a well-established FQHC decide to open a second family medicine program on site at the same time that the residency is being subsumed into a new medical school. Hilarity ensues. We will discuss ‘lessons learned.'”

This will be the second of three presentations on Wednesday morning, April 10, 2013, on new initiatives in community-based residency training.