The LEADS curriculum is designed to teach students how to improve patients' opportunities and choices and to empower them to act on their patients' behalf through persuasive writing, working with the media, and legislative advocacy. The LEADS program does this through leadership and advocacy skills development and by providing guidance and mentorship through your Mentored Scholarly Activity (MSA).
LEADS Spring Elective is offered to first year medical students. The spring elective was designed around specific advocacy skills interwoven with various health disparities topics. Advocacy skills include legislative advocacy, community organizing and coalition building, and interaction with the media through print, television, radio and online venues. As an example, we developed a fact sheet around substance abuse and asked students to create a message and to propose a policy solution. They subsequently used this message to practice TV interviewing skills. For complete course objectives please see the Course Syllabus.
LEADS Summer Internship program is offered to first year medical students on a competitive application basis. We currently limit participation to 16 students per summer with the intent to expand to 20 by 2011. The students in the program complete an 8-week curriculum in leadership and advocacy while working in a community-based service or advocacy organization to complete an advocacy project. Some of the projects students have completed in the past include: a needs assessment of the African Refugee community in Denver, assessing the impact of HB 1023 on access and utilization of preventive services among Latinos with Plan de Salud, organizing and training volunteers to enroll children in SCHIP and Medicaid, a statewide survey on children’s healthcare insurance coverage and needs, evaluating an intervention for sexually high risk teens in DPS middle and high schools, development of an evaluation plan for the Aging Well Program in Routt County, and researching quality measures of a medical home for children including expansion of primary care through collaborative efforts between pediatricians and mental health providers. For a complete list of 2008 summer projects, please see Course Syllabus.
Link to Community Mentors
Recent Student Internship Projects:
Bell Policy Center: conduct over twenty interviews across the state to better understand peoples’ attitudes toward fiscal issues. Rocky Mountain Youth Clinics: Health outcomes in a pediatric population with insurance churn at a safety net provider. Colorado Physicians Insurance Company (COPIC): Diagnostic errors resulting in patient harm: identification, assessment, and prevention. Colorado Coalition for the Medically Underserved: Aurora Health Access Taskforce. Denver Public School Based Clinics Pregnancy Prevention Program: Texting Programs in Pregnancy Prevention Education. Colorado Coalition for the Medically Underserved: Barriers to Primary Care Access and Emergency Department Utilization: Implications for Healthcare Reform on a National and Community Level. Metro community Provider Network (MCPN): Documenting best practices of clinical workflow in the management of chronic diabetes: What Variables affect HbA1c as a measure of clinical outcomes in a community clinic. LEADS Harm Reduction Action Center (HRAC): Factors related to quality healthcare services among active injection drug users in Denver, CO. Autism Society of Colorado (ASC): Identify and disseminate best practices for the interaction between first responders and people with autism. Lowry Family Health Center and Colorado Asian Health Education and Promotion (CAHEP): Student/refugee Health Education Collaborative. The Center: GLBT Provider Database.
LEADS Fall Elective will be offered to second year medical students who have participated in the spring and/or summer courses. It is designed to utilize advanced advocacy and leadership skills with direct application to a current community or health policy concern. The first offering of this course will be in the Fall of 2008. We have identified a need in the community that affects care to the underserved: malpractice liability concerns prevent many volunteer health professionals from offering their services in free clinics. The class will be facilitated by the LEADS faculty, but the direction of the course will be determined by the students. The class will explore the current legal environment around this issue, compare and contrast that with other states, and engage volunteers and community health center leaders to learn more about what barriers, real and perceived, exist that prevent providers from volunteering. Ultimately the class will devise a strategic advocacy plan that will include an action plan for lowering the liability-related barriers for volunteering in these clinics. The goal of the class is to provide an opportunity to practice advocacy skills by addressing a real problem with a direct, measurable impact on the health and care of the underserved. For complete course objectives please see the Course Syllabus.
On-line Health Module
Many health care providers wish to advocate for patients when individual clinical concerns reflect broader public health issues. Addressing health policy at the level of state legislation is an important step to understand when facilitating change. This program offers sequential steps toward approaching and negotiating mechanics of the legislative process.
Topics include:
• Media Advocacy: Use the broadcast and print media to advocate the objectives or activities of
a community organization.
• Dialogue on Leadership Research: Appreciate that modern leadership research and non-fiction
biographies offer insights for community health leaders which will enable them to bring
community organizations to higher levels of effectiveness.
• Legislative advocacy: Through a web-based exercise and small group sessions students will
participate in a simulation to review the legislative process, read a bill, write a legislative fact
sheet, work with a coalition, negotiate and compromise to pass legislation, develop a media
strategy, and mobilize grass roots support.
Health Care Module Link
__________________________________________________________________
Seminar Series:
Track Students are required to attend 50% of our speaker seminars
WATCH FOR OUR UPCOMING SPEAKERS SERIES