By Ankur Thakkar
Last year, when first-year medical student Laura Dilly picked up the phone to learn about mammogram availability on the south side of Chicago, she had questions.
Are there weekend hours?
No.
Is there anything available this month?
Sorry.
Where else can I call for more information?
Don’t know.
“The responses, if we got them, weren’t conducive to working women,” Dilly said. Her research was part of the curriculum of a course called “Health Care Disparities in America”—an eight-week course designed to teach students how to address health disparities in the community.
Led by Monica Vela, MD, the course culminates in a research or service project of the students’ choosing. “The students are given the ability to learn and apply skills to projects that they wouldn’t encounter until much later in their education,” Vela said.
One such project studied the accessibility of breast screening services for women and initiated the Pritzker Mammography Access Partnership. The group, consisting of nine medical students and three physician mentors, submitted an abstract about mammography awareness and access to the 2009 Department of Medicine Research Day. That abstract not only won first place, but caught the attention of Urban Health Initiative (UHI) leaders.
“The project reinforced a longstanding goal among the faculty such as Dr. Olopade and Dr. Newstead, and we really felt it was time to participate,” said Laura Derks, director of UHI. Through the efforts of Quin Golden, chief operating officer of UHI, they met with the Illinois Department of Public Health to see how the Medical Center could become involved.
Involvement with the Illinois Breast and Cervical Cancer Program corresponds with UHI’s goals of sharing Medical Center resources to build and enhance the surrounding communities. Through its partnership with the Chicago Family Health Center, the Medical Center became a referral source, providing mammograms for uninsured South Side residents.
UHI sees the Medical Center’s commitment to the program as significant since it was reinforced by the research of first-year students. “They absolutely zeroed in on the fact that safety net providers need to know more about where their patients can go to get services,” Derks said.
Vela credits the response of UHI and Medical Center leaders to the project and praises her students for their dedication. “Medical students play a huge role in the university, we should be empowering them much more than we already do, they tend to exceed expectations.”
Since the Illinois Breast and Cervical Program’s inception, it has screened more than 66,000 women for breast and cervical cancers. Malignant tumors were detected in less than two percent of the program’s patients. Breast cancer screenings are available to eligible women who are enrolled in the Illinois Breast and Cervical Cancer Program at Chicago Family Health Center.
For more information visit the Chicago Family Health Center.
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