Systems, Society, and Humanism in Medicine (SSHM)

A strength of our Total Health Curriculum is the integration of six longitudinal themes that transform responsible students into socially accountable leaders in the healthcare system and their communities. These themes foster the development of compassionate and adaptable physicians dedicated to a personcentered approach to improving the health and well-being of the patients and communities they serve.

1. Community Immersion: Provides you with the skills to understand the needs of your patients and your communities through the practices of narrative, cultural and structural humility, and to embrace engagement and involvement with communities in your area of practice, including service learning.

2. Health System Citizenship: Prepares future doctors to contribute to quality improvement, participate in early adoption of technology and function in teambased models of care. This theme delves deeply into healthcare delivery science and leverages the strength of Geisinger’s value-based care model to focus on system improvement.

3. Personal and Professional Development: Lays the foundation to begin shaping attitudes, skills and behaviors needed to commit to a social contract, participate in a community of practice and improve health through service to individuals and communities.

4. Population Health: Prepares you for individual and population-oriented prevention and health promotion efforts with a focus on wellness, epidemiologic and statistical methods, reduction of disease burden and improvement of health outcomes in patient populations and communities.

5. Primary Care: Focuses attention on the most critical health need in the nation and centers the future physician’s approach on wellness and disease prevention, regardless of medical specialty.

6. Social Justice and Health Equity: Encourages you to examine how bodies (individual and collective) are constructed and how such constructions cultivate modes of difference that can lead to bias and health inequity. This theme focuses on cultural, structural and epistemic humility, with an end goal of working toward advocacy for inclusive policies and practices.