Community Health Programs

The Community Health Programs are an integral part of the program. It ensures an early immersion in the primary health care system and a comprehensive approach of care for the new graduates. The programs comprised of four components: Public Health, Maternal and Child Health, Family Studies, Community Oriented Research Project, and Primary Care Clinical Skills Activity Module.  
 
The Public Health Program aims at enhancing the medical students' knowledge of preventive medicine and raising their awareness of the role of Public Health in maintaining the health of the population. The program allows the students to learn about the functions of the Public Health Directorate and gives them the opportunity to experience the real work faced by public health professionals. It also provides them with an experience to understand the importance and relevance of environmental and ecological factors in health of the individual and the community. 

The Maternal and Child Health Program deals with the professional skills needed to examine healthy women during pregnancy, after birth and at end of puerperium, and to identify risk factors in those groups, and intervene accordingly. It also deals with the skills needed to examine healthy children, and to identify risk factors in those groups, and intervene accordingly. The program aims to expose the students to the rationale, development, organization, and implementation of the Maternal and Child Health Program regarding accessibility and distribution, integration with curative and supportive services, practice of preventive care in appropriate settings and practical clinical training. 
 
The Family Studies Program allows students to learn about how families function, and how they cope with life events, illnesses, and social difficulties. It allows students to feel and experience the community, and to better understand the importance of this context to patients’ health, and to the effective delivery of health care. It is also an opportunity for students to study the relationship between health issues and social environment and understand the importance of the social network available to the family.
 
The Community Oriented Research Project orients medical students to the contribution that research makes towards solving health and health care system problems in the community through active participation in a field study. The program builds the research ability of future doctors and equips them with skills to understand and practice evidence-based health care and to undertake their own research. The program builds on previous concepts and skills in biostatics, computing and methodology covered in the previous years. Students are required to undertake and complete individual studies and achieve an understanding of these concepts. They are grouped into research project teams and each team is assigned to a research supervisor.

The Primary Care Clinical Skills Activity Module prepares year 4 medical students for clerkship phase with special emphasis on clinical skills needed for consulting patients. It aims to give the students clinical experience in applying the knowledge and the skills they have learned during their four years of medical education on real patients. It also aims to provide them with the opportunity for taking proper and relevant history, applying the learned communication skills, performing physical examination to the most common clinical presentations at the level of primary care. In this transitional phase from pre-clerkship to clerkship, this module will also encourage students to develop a practical approach of implementing preventive activities. Such activities include health maintenance tailored to different patients seeking medical help from primary health care.