Training medical students to focus on underserved communities is a career quest of Michael V. Drake, M.D., the chancellor of the University of California, Irvine, distinguished ophthalmologist and leader in workforce diversity.
Last week, Drake delivered the 2013 Homer G. Phillips Lecture at the Washington University School of Medicine (WUSM). He spoke on the topic, “Improving Public Health through Academic Medicine-Community Partnerships.”
Will Ross, M.D., associate dean for Diversity for WUSM, welcomed an audience that included health professionals, patients and friends of Homer G. Phillips Hospital, the premier training ground for black physicians and nurses for many years until its closure in 1979.
A former colleague of Drake’s, Larry Shapiro, M.D., executive vice chancellor and dean for Medical Affairs at WUSM, said Drake has led the development of programs that improved the presence of the UC Health system in communities that most need the attention.
“Mike’s focus was particularly in trying to meet the health care needs of California’s underserved populations and to ensure that the workforce that was being produced had the skill and the orientation to meet that important need,” Shapiro said.
The World Health Organization describes the social determinants of health as “the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age. These circumstances are shaped by the distribution of money, power and resources at global, national and local levels.”
Working around barriers caused by the social determinants affecting health – such as poverty, transportation issues or lack of access to care – is a challenge health providers and patients face daily. Under Drake’s leadership, UC Irvine prepares physicians to address those issues via its Program in Medical Education, or PRIME, which now serves as a model for other medical schools in the UC system.
“People who take care of poor people in primary care get paid the least, and the medical schools aren’t nearly as focused in producing more of those,” Drake said.
Physicians in the PRIME program serve vulnerable, marginalized patients, including racial and ethnic minorities, poor people, immigrants and rural Californians, who have less access to care.
“The students in the program go to school for an extra one to two years, so they get their degree after five or six years,” Drake said. “They focus on whatever aspect of the broad curriculum that’s available in the university they think will help them most in being able to elevate the condition of people who are underserved.”
In the PRIME-LC program at UC-Irvine, students also start medical school six weeks early in an immersion program working with people in Mexico.
“By the time one of the doctors finishes, he or she will be able to practice bilingually and bi-culturally with people who have Spanish as a first language,” Drake said.
PRIME was initially designed to leave the students debt-free upon graduation; however, medical school costs have made that prohibitive. Students get scholarships between $50,000 and $100,000 as a minimum. Drake said, “We have to raise those funds.”
Drake is a Stanford University (A.B.) and UC San Francisco (M.D.) alumnus, who previously directed special research programs in tobacco, breast cancer and HIV/AIDS and spent more than two decades on the faculty of the UC San Francisco School of Medicine, becoming the Steven P. Shearing Professor of Ophthalmology and senior associate dean.
Drake has conducted clinical research on glaucoma, maintained an active referral practice, and has written scholarly articles, chapters and five textbooks. He was a member of the Institute of Medicine committee that produced the landmark 2004 report “In the Nation’s Compelling Interest: Ensuring Diversity in the Health Care Workforce.”
Drake has served as trustee and first African-American president of the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society and as chair of the Board of Trustees of the Association of Academic Health Centers. He is a fellow of the Institute of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Following Drake’s lecture, two local leaders in public health received plaques in recognition of their ongoing commitment to improving community health: Delores Gunn, M.D., director of the St. Louis County Department of Health, and Pamela Rice Walker, interim director of health for the City of St. Louis Health Department.
