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Class of 2019 – First to Spend All Four Years in Tulsa – Graduates With Community Medicine State of Mind
The OU-TU School of Community Medicine Class of 2019 is pictured on graduation day in Tulsa.
Class of 2019 – First to Spend All Four Years in Tulsa – Graduates With Community Medicine State of Mind
Members of the Class of 2019 at the OU-TU School of Community Medicine hold the distinction of being the first group to have spent all four years of their medical education at the Tulsa campus.
Beyond that uniqueness, however, was the distinctiveness of their education. The class was immersed in the concept of community medicine – improving the health of a population by understanding the multitude of factors and issues that affect health.
“One of the incredible things as an educator and a dean has been to watch the professional identity formation of this class,” said James Herman, M.D., dean of the School of Community Medicine. “It’s been gratifying to meet these very bright students, who came in on the first day of medical school anxious about what was to come, then to watch them learn all the science and figure out how to manage patients’ problems.
Community medicine involves understanding the social determinants of health and putting yourself in other people’s shoes and trying to figure out how you can best help them. And it’s not always a prescription.”
The School of Community Medicine also is celebrating the fact that, out of a class of 30, 11 graduates are staying on campus for their residencies. That not only means they will continue their training with a community medicine mindset, but that they are more likely to stay in Oklahoma to practice medicine. One of the drivers for establishing the School of Community Medicine was to broaden access to healthcare and decrease the disparities that exist between north and south Tulsa.
“We know that if someone does their medical school and residency in Oklahoma, there’s about a 65 percent chance they will stay in Oklahoma,” Herman said. “Our goal is to have more physicians for Oklahoma and our region.”
