Program Overview

The mission of Mercer University School of Medicine (MUSM) is to educate physicians and health professionals to meet the health care needs of rural and medically underserved areas of Georgia. The Department of Community Medicine directs the Community Science Program, which provides students with opportunities to apply and integrate knowledge and skills learned in Community Medicine, Biomedical Problems, Clinical Skills and Bioethics to the practice of medicine in a community. The Department of Community Medicine also offers senior year electives to enhance the skills taught in the Community Science Curriculum.

The Community Science Program consists of two complementary components, campus-based and community-based curriculum. The campus-based component includes topics of study such as population health, public, epidemiology, cultural competence, health promotion and disease prevention, evidence-based medicine, rural medicine, and biostatistics. In the community-based component, each student is matched with a rural or underserved community in which he or she will live for portions of Year 1 (two weeks), Year 2 (four weeks), and Year 4 (four weeks). The student works with a physician preceptor to study dynamics of clinical medicine, population health, community and family life, and community-based primary care.

Senior electives offered through the Department of Community Medicine include: Community Medicine, Fundamentals of Epidemiology, Introduction to Biostatistics in Clinical Medicine, Introduction to Public Health, Research in Population Health, Introduction to Migrant Health Care, and Managed Care. Some of these electives include interaction with preceptors in local, state and national government health posts in Georgia.