Beyond Flexner 2016: Medical schools still need to up their social mission

The “Beyond Flexner 2016” Conference was held in Miami September 19-21, 2016. It was the third in this series of conferences, originally stimulated by the 2010 Annals of Internal Medicine article “The social mission of medical education: ranking the schools”[1]. The first conference, held in Tulsa in 2012, featured the authors of the article and leaders from many “community-based” medical schools founded in 2 rounds of medical school expansion, the 1970s and the 2000s, discussing their real or proposed innovations (Beyond Flexner: Taking the Social Mission of Medical Schools to the next level, June 1, 2012). The second, held in Albuquerque in 2015, had major growth in attendance, and a group of national speakers who powerfully addressed the failures of both medical schools and our medical system to address the health needs of the American people, especially through (lack of) diversity in our health care workforce, equity (especially racial) in the care provided, and the inadequate numbers of primary care doctors being produced (Beyond Flexner: It is time to stop shoring up the bridge and figure out how to cross the river!, April 7, 2015). The metaphor for that blog’s title came from a talk by Don Berwick, in which he compared the US health system to the sturdily-built Choluteca Bridge in Honduras that withstood Hurricane Mitch only to be useless because the hurricane moved the river. (Such a great picture I’m posting it again here!)

The Miami conference, again sponsored by the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation along with Florida International University, was very good, although it had some disappointing aspects, notably the attendance, about 350, which was a little less than that in Albuquerque. The speakers were again excellent, with several standouts:  Mona Hanna-Attisha, the pediatrician who exposed the Flint lead poisoning crisis, gave a powerful talk in which she observed that despite being in Michigan, the “mitten state” surrounded by the largest collection of fresh water in the world, Flint’s water even today is still not safe. Robert H. Brook, of the RAND Corporation and UCLA gave a talk where he challenged the “rights” of medical schools, suggesting that hospitals (especially academic medical centers, AHCs) that do not care for their fair share of Medicaid and uninsured patients should not be allowed to have residency training programs, and that, more than allowing community service to count toward promotion and tenure, we should not allow anyone to be promoted without community service. Julio Frenk, the President of the University of Miami, a public health physician who served as Secretary of Health in Mexico, spoke about the need for building social capital that did not just “bond” communities but created “bridges” between them. He also noted that education had to move from the “informative” (providing the knowledge to become a professional) to the “formative” (creating the character and roles that define a professional) to the “transformative”, where professionals could truly create change both in their professions and in society.

One of the new events was the presentation of the First Annual Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation Awards for Social Mission in Medical Education. The Institutional Award went to Morehouse School of Medicine, the Individual Award to Thomas Curtin, MD of Massachusetts and a leader in establishing Teaching Health Centers, and the program award to the University of Florida for its “Putting Families First” interprofessional education program. The highlight was the presentation of the Lifetime Achievement Award to H. Jack Geiger, whose achievements, from establishing the first Community Health Centers in the US, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Physicians for Human Rights, to serving as Dean of the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Sciences at CCNY, are enough for several such lifetime awards. Dr. Geiger, who spoke eloquently at the 2015 conference, again addressed the group. He is nearly blind but as powerful and articulate a speaker as ever; he noted that "I have lost most of my eyesight, but it turns out you don't need good eyesight to hang on to a vision!"

In my 2012 blog on the Tulsa Conference, I noted 4 areas I felt were important for focus, and reiterated them writing about the 2015 Albuquerque Conference. They were:

·         Diversity: How does the school produce a health workforce that looks more like American by enrolling, and supporting, a group of students that is truly diverse in ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, and geographic origin?

·         Social Determinants of Health: How does the school teach about and train students in, and carry out programs aimed at addressing, the social determinants of health? How does its curriculum and work invert that of the traditional medical school, which focused most on tertiary hospital-care, and emphasize instead ambulatory  primary care, community based interventions, and interventions on the most important health determinants including housing, safety, education, food, and warmth?

·         Disparities: How does the school, through its programs of education and community intervention, and its research agenda and practices, work to reduce disparities in health care and health among populations?

·         Community Engagement: How does the school identify the community(ies) it serves and how does it involve them in determining the location of training, kinds of programs it carries out, and in identifying the questions that need to be answered by research?

There was more emphasis on interprofessional diversity at this conference, with panels including two national nursing leaders (Divina Grossman and Randy Rausch), and a panel including a community (and FQHC) based Dental School Dean (Jack Dillenberg). There was great ethnic and racial diversity in the speakers and moderators, but somewhat less emphasis on diversity in the content of the talks than in 2015. Primary care was still emphasized, but I remain concerned that the conference still features relatively small programs in medical or health professions schools aimed at increasing diversity, primary care, and community engagement. This is, of course, because most such programs are small within their AHCs, and nowhere near as important as the provision of tertiary and quaternary medical care and obtaining NIH research grants. Until these can be scaled up, until producing a majority of graduates entering primary care, enrolling and graduate underrepresented minority and low-income students at least in proportion to their percentages in the population, and working in the community becomes the highest priority of an AHC, the movement is stalled.

It is sometimes tempting to think that AHCs are incorrigible, that they are set in their ways – and in the way that they are financed – and that achieving the goals I have outlined above, or even more modest improvements in social mission – are not going to happen, at least any time soon. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) supports in word – and to a limited extent in deed – the goals of diversity and community engagement, but not enough to change the core focus of their members. Indeed, tellingly, they continue to call for increasing the number of residency positions, but not on targeting them to primary care, as does the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP). The largest specialty in medicine, Internal Medicine, opposes AAFP’s proposal to fund only “first certification” residency positions, as this would not fund their subspecialty fellowships.[2] Thus, they put self-interest (having funded fellows in their subspecialties) ahead of the need for America to have more primary care doctors.

Yes, it can get frustrating to work with medical schools and their entrenched anti-social values. But this is where the medical students are, where they are trained, and where they get their ideas of what might be the most appropriate specialties to enter and what th

e professional role of a physician is – e.g., working in the community or not. They need both individual and institutional role models.

So the need to work for a social mission for medical – and health professions – education is still an important goal.

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[1] Mullan F, Chen C, Petterson S, Kolsky G, Spagnola M,“The social mission of medical education: ranking the schools”, Ann Int Med 15 June 2010, Vol 152, No. 12,

[2] Butkus R, et al. Ann Intern Med. 2016;doi:10.7326/M15-2917.

Health, Medicine and Justice published: available on Amazon

NOW

Available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and independent booksellers.

Health care delivery in the U.S. is a mess. We lead the world by far

in spending, but trail other developed countries in most health outcomes.

Our health care is disjointed, not coordinated, and seems

to be designed to maximize profits for insurers and health care

providers. These two groups usually seem to be in conflict about

which should get most of the money. While individual patients may

receive outstanding care, especially when it can be delivered profitably,

the population as a whole does not. Is the system not working,

or is it working too well to do the wrong thing? After all, “every

system is perfectly designed to get the results that it gets”.

In this book, Dr. Freeman argues that the problem is that our

healthcare system is not designed primarily to improve health. He

presents extensive evidence about the design of our health care

system and the results that it gets. He examines the imbalance

of high-tech care with primary care, the way our doctors are educated,

how new discoveries are presented to the public, and the

role of profit in distorting the design of U.S. healthcare. He suggests

how a new system could be designed based on the values

of achieving the best health for all of our people.

-----------------------------

“Health, Medicine and Justice is not your typical health care book. It challenges the very goals underlying the U.S. health care system: “We are getting what our system is designed to get—profit and wealth for those who control it, rather than health for the people of the nation.” If you think this idea is too controversial, this book is full of facts that make the case.” —Thomas Bodenheimer, M.D., University of California – San Francisco 

Uncommon sense on health care - a book review, The Kansas City Star, March 29, 2015

“Joshua Freeman is chief of family medicine at the University of Kansas Hospital and an inveterate blogger. He started his “Medicine and Social Justice” blog in 2008 calling for universal health care coverage and has returned repeatedly to the subject. That’s because even though the Affordable Care Act makes coverage available to many people, Freeman doesn’t think it goes far enough. And while politicians dare not speak its name, Freeman isn’t shy about what he thinks we need: A single-payer, Canadian-style system covering everyone.

Freeman recently gave me an advance copy of his new book, “Health, Medicine and Justice: Designing a Fair and Equitable Healthcare System,” laying out his arguments. It’s a fine primer on the tangled web of special interests and ultimately futile regulation that passes for a health care system in this country. (Truth in punditry: Freeman cites my reporting in his chapter on the role of profit in health care.)

Freeman provides telling anecdotes: His experience treating uninsured patients whose chronic illnesses were out of control because they couldn’t afford care. His discovery in New Orleans of a safety-net clinic sponsored by Qatar — which means America, the richest nation on Earth, accepts foreign aid to care for its poor. He’s also good at taking points often made by others and making connections. Yes, we know we spend more on health care than other wealthy
nations and despite that, our people aren’t particularly healthy. But the U.S. also spends less on social services, he observes, the kinds of things
that elevate people from the poverty that degraded their health in the first place.

But the poor don’t have political clout. Health care providers and insurers do. So that’s where the money goes. “We have a health care system that is designed to make profit rather than health,” Freeman says.

According to Freeman, a single-payer system — basically, Medicare for all — would go a long way toward putting the focus back on patients. It would eliminate the crazy quilt of insurance plans that drive up administrative costs. And it would set more equal and rational payments for medical
services. Providers could still compete, Freeman says, but it would be on the basis of quality or personal style.

Perhaps Freeman’s most compelling argument is that a system covering everyone would unite us all, rich and poor. We would all have an equal
stake in making sure providers were adequately paid and delivered high-quality care, and that everyone had access to that care.

But Freeman sees health care as a basic human right. That’s still a subject for debate in the United States.” — by Alan Bavley


“The US health care system is broken,” Joshua Freemen tells us in the opening line of his powerful critique, Health, Medicine and Justice: Designing a Fair and Equitable Healthcare System. He spends the next 300 pages masterfully and persuasively documenting this charge. His voice is disappointed more than it is angry or shrill. Freeman is a practicing family physician and the chairman of the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Kansas School of Medicine. It is his system and he wants to see it perform as it should, to work in a more equitable fashion, and to produce results that the country is paying for but not getting. His command of fact is impressive and his tone caring and therapeutic. He tells us about everything from comparative health systems in Europe to profit motives in the Board Room. Dr. Freeman concludes that a single
payer health system is the solution to better and more equitable healthcare in America. It is “political will,” he tells us, “that will fix the broken system.”
—Fitzhugh Mullan, M.D., Murdock Head Professor of Medicine and Health Policy, Professor of Pediatrics The George Washington University


“In his book, Health, Medicine and Justice, Joshua Freeman not only explains the unique features of the U.S. health care system that result in significantly higher costs but only mediocrity in performance, he also discusses the issues against a background of health care justice. This leads to the compelling conclusion that, being all in this together, we can apply principles of health care justice to ensure higher quality health care for everyone, at a level of spending that the nation can afford.”
—Don McCanne, M.D., Senior Health Policy Fellow, Physicians For a National Health Program (PNHP)


“This is an informative and entertaining overview of the current status and deficiencies of the US healthcare system. It will serve as a useful text for anyone just beginning their inquiry into how the system works, or for someone wanting a refresher course on the influences of social policy and values on the outcomes of the unique approaches to providing healthcare prevalent in the  US.”
—Robert Graham, M.D., former CEO, American Academy of Family Physicians


“Whether simplifying the arcane methods of financing graduate medical education, or clarifying the inaccuracies and conflicts of interest in the way that medical schools report their production of primary care doctors, Dr Freeman provides insight into the bases for our out-of-balance health care workforce. In an engaging and understandable style, he not only identifies the underlying issues but also points to some opportunities for righting the health care system’s deficiencies; and makes a strong argument for why we should do so. If you don’t care about social justice and don’t want to risk caring more, don’t read this book.”
—Christine C. Matson M.D., Glenn Mitchell Chair in Generalist Medicine Chair, Department of Family and Community Medicine, Eastern Virginia Medical School

------------------

Contact: Joshua Freeman, M.D.
Cell Phone:
Email: jfreeman3@gmail.com
Health, Medicine and Justice
Designing a Fair and Equitable Healthcare System
By Joshua Freeman, M.D.
Published in 2015 by Copernicus Healthcare • 315
pages • ISBN PB: 978-0-9887996-8-4 • $18.95

Beyond Flexner: It is time to stop shoring up the bridge and figure out how to cross the river!

I recently attended the “Beyond Flexner 2015” conference in Albuquerque, NM. Originally titled “Beyond Flexner II”, it was a followup to the 2012 “Beyond Flexner” conference in Tulsa, OK, which I discussed in my June 16, 2012 post “Beyond Flexner: Taking the Social Mission of Medical Schools to the next level”. The first conference was itself in part stimulated by the 2010 publication of “The Social Mission of Medical Education: Ranking the Schools” by Mullan, Chen, et al. in the Annals of Internal Medicine.[i]  Fitzhugh Mullan, head of the Medical Education Futures group at George Washington University, was co-director of this recent conference along with Arthur Kaufman, Vice Chancellor for Community Affairs at the University of New Mexico Health Science Center. The organizing committee was a “Who’s Who” of leaders in the movement to make medical schools more accountable for meeting the actual health needs of the people of the United States, including Gerry Clancy, host of the 2012 conference in Tulsa, and several of the other authors of 2010 paper.

The attendees at the 2012 conference in Tulsa were captured in a posed photograph, crowded but with  recognizable faces. This would not be true of the nearly 400 people in Albuquerque, who also represented a much wider group. In addition to more university sponsors (including Florida International University, which will host the next conference in 2017), several other foundations have joined the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, which helped sponsor the first conference as well. The bulk of the attendees were medical school faculty, with some residents and students, but others from a wide swath of those with an interest in the impact of medical school output on health were in attendance. Notably, this included people from the cooperative extension services based at our nation’s land grant universities, who have been collaborating with health sciences centers to create “health extension” programs in a number of states (The Primary Care Extension Service, July 12, 2009);  New Mexico’s HEROs (Health Extension Rural Offices) program is one of the national leaders.

There were a number of stimulating and provocative speakers, including Camara Jones, about whom I have already written, who spoke about racism and the Social Determinants of Equity. Don Berwick, founder and senior fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and former interim Administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), gave a powerful talk about the direction of healthcare in the US. His most powerful metaphor was of the Choluteca Bridge in Honduras, which was so well built that it withstood Hurricane Mitch in 1995. Unfortunately, the hurricane relocated the river, so that now it no longer functions for its intended purpose! Dr. Berwick also noted that if the US spent 15% of its GDP on health care, instead of the current 18%, it will still be higher than #2, Switzerland. If the US had spent at the per capita rate of Switzerland over the last 25 years, it would have spent $15.5 TRILLION less. That is real money, and could have been used to address many of the social determinants we are always told there is not enough money to do.

Perhaps the most stirring talk was given by H. Jack Geiger, former Dean of the Sophie Davis (now City University) School of Medicine in New York. Accurately described as a “living legend”, Dr. Geiger founded the first two community health centers in the US, in Charlestown, MA near Boston and in Mound Bayou, MS. He was a founding member of the group Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), the US affiliate of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). In his introduction we were reminded that Dr. Geiger was once chastised by a federal bureaucrat for writing prescriptions for food for his patients in Mississippi, and told that the federal funds supporting his program were to be for treatments. His now-classic response was that “the last time I checked my medical textbooks, the treatment for malnutrition was FOOD!” He noted that the last decade might be called that of raising consciousness of the Social Determinants of Health, but that because many of these are determined by (and are currently being eroded by) the political process, called for the next decade to be that of the Political Determinants of Health. He did not mention, but I note, that while IPPNW won the Nobel Peace Prize (1985), the Nobel Prize for “Medicine” in fact goes exclusively to researchers in the basic sciences. How wonderful, fitting, and appropriate would it be to go to someone like Jack Geiger, whose life’s work had really made a difference in the health of people!

In writing about the 2012 conference I suggested that certain goals be the focus of the “Beyond Flexner” movement:

·         Diversity: How does the school produce a health workforce that looks more like American by enrolling, and supporting, a group of students that is truly diverse in ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, and geographic origin?

·         Social Determinants of Health: How does the school teach about and train students in, and carry out programs aimed at addressing, the social determinants of health? How does its curriculum and work invert that of the traditional medical school, which focused most on tertiary hospital-care, and emphasize instead ambulatory  care, community based interventions, and interventions on the most important health determinants including housing, safety, education, food, and warmth?

·         Disparities: How does the school, through its programs of education and community intervention, and its research agenda and practices, work to reduce disparities in health care and health among populations?

·         Community Engagement: How does the school identify the community(ies) it serves and how does it involve them in determining the location of training, kinds of programs it carries out, and in identifying the questions that need to be answered by research?

I believe they are still valid. The Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) were discussed everywhere in the conference, and Health Disparities are the central focus of addressing them, or in Dr. Jones’ phrase, the Social Determinants of Equity. Community Engagement was emphasized through the broader participation in the conference (such as the people from Extension services) and one of its highlights was an afternoon of tours of such community-engaged programs in Albuquerque. I went on a visit to the city’s International District, and the East Central Ministries, which operates an innovative clinic driven by community health workers, an Urban Farm, and a small factory manufacturing ollas, unglazed clay jugs used for low-water-use irrigation.

Diversity was certainly addressed by many of the conference speakers, including Dr. Jones and Marc Nivet, Chief Diversity Officer for the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), who pointed out how poorly our schools have done. In the 1990s The AAMC had a goal for minorities of “3000 by 2000”, but in the last 35 years African-American applicants have increased by 1000 and admissions by only 250. Jose Rodriguez and his colleagues writing in Family Medicine note that African-Americans peaked at 8.1% of medical students in 1994, and was down to 7.23% in 2010, Hispanics are up to 8.25% despite a much higher % of the population, and underrepresented minority (URM) faculty in medicine has increased from 7% to 8% from 1993 to 2010 despite an increase in those same groups in the general population from 23.1% to 31.4% in the same period.[ii] In the accompanying editorial, which I wrote, I call for an immediate, dramatic, and comprehensive effort to change both the socioeconomic and racial makeup of our medical school classes.[iii]

If anything was a little disappointing to me at the conference, it was the degree to which the audience was less willing to pick up on the issue of lack of diversity. While there was applause for the comments of Drs. Jones, Nivet, and others, most of the questions and comments focused on the SDOH. These are extraordinarily important, and emphasizing the need to teach them in medical school is as well, but poverty will not be solved quickly. Diversity, on the other hand, could be; our medical school class next year could look dramatically different if we changed the criteria by which we admit so that half the class came from the lower 50% of income and we had double the percent of minorities.

Many of the conference attendees were from newer medical schools, whose goals are more tied to SDOH, Community Engagement and Diversity, and they were celebrated from the podium. But while they may deserve this celebration, the older medical schools need to be held responsible as well; unless they change their admissions practices and their goals to serve the communities, the impact of the newer schools will be only at the margins.

There is a lot to do, and to accomplish it will take a movement. Hopefully a movement growing from “Beyond Flexner” can start the process.

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[i] Fitzhugh Mullan, MD; Candice Chen, MD, MPH; Stephen Petterson, PhD; Gretchen Kolsky, MPH, CHES; and Michael Spagnola, BA. The Social Mission of Medical Education: Ranking the Schools. Ann Intern Med. 2010;152(12):804-811. doi:10.7326/0003-4819-152-12-201006150-00009

[ii] Rodriguez JE, Campbell KM, Adelson WJ, Poor representation of Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans in Medicine, Fam Med 2015;47(4):259-63.)

[iii] Freeman J, Diversity goals in medicine: it’s time to stop talking and start walking, Fam Med 2015;47(4):257-8.

Beyond Flexner Conference on the Social Mission in Medical Education

"Beyond Flexner: Social Mission in Medical Education", to be held in Tulsa May 15-17, promises to be a major conference in addressing and enhancing the social missions of medical and other health professions education.

Chaired by Fitzhugh Mullan, MD, of George Washington University and the Medical Education Futures Study, and Gerald Clancy, MD, President of the University of Oklahoma - Tulsa and Dean of the School of Community Medicine there, feature speakers will include David Satcher, MD and H. Jack Geiger, MD.

I have no idea whether others will bring this up, but I am again motivated by having recently reviewed the literature on why under-represented minority college students who want to become doctors don't end up applying. Barr, et al, found a negative experience in a chemistry course was the single largest cause[1]. How much is the ability to use complex chemistry important in a physician compared to commitment to meeting social missions? Indeed, other than passing the first two years of classes and USMLE I, is it useful at all?


I hope that these are the kind of issues we address.

I will be there and look forward to joining a lot of enthusiastic and creative colleagues!


[1] Barr DA, Gonzalez ME, Warant S. The Leaky Pipeline: Factors Associated With  Early Decline in Interest in Premedical Studies Among Underrepresented Minority Undergraduate Students, Acad Med, 2008; 83:503–511.