Primary care training and enhancement -- residency training in street medicine - this initiative aims to enhance the cayuga medical center's internal medicine residency program (CMC residency),…

Primary care training and enhancement -- residency training in street medicine - this initiative aims to enhance the cayuga medical center's internal medicine residency program (CMC residency), which employs an innovative training model designed to prepare residents to be physician-leaders in medicine through comprehensive primary care training with a significant focus on community health. Currently, primary care residents receive some exposure to caring for people experiencing homelessness through health equity and addiction medicine didactic curricula and clinical rotations. However, existing educational experiences primarily connect residents with patients in traditional care settings. This does not enable the residents to meet people where they are, and there remain significant barriers to care for the many people experiencing homelessness within the cayuga health service area throughout rural and non-rural areas of the finger lakes and southern tier regions in new york state. An enhanced, focused street medicine program will create opportunities for residents to become highly effective clinicians as a part of a comprehensive continuum of care, prepared to meet the complex medical and social care needs of people experiencing homelessness. Our program will create a longitudinal and progressive curriculum for primary care residents, utilizing evidence-based best practices in street medicine, addiction medicine, and integrated behavioral healthcare, in partnership with reach medical. If funded, our program will: develop and enhance trainings, clinical rotations, and didactic and clinical curricula content to train residents in street medicine to provide sensitive and quality care for people experiencing homelessness, with particular attention to mental health and substance use disorders (SUD). Increase residents' knowledge and skills to meet the unique needs of people experiencing homelessness and assist patients with navigation of the medical, behavioral health, legal, and social support systems related to clinical care. Increase residents' knowledge and skills to work in interprofessional teams, including chronic disease management, mental health, substance use, and medical-legal interprofessional teams, to address the sdoh that impact patient care. Through comprehensive didactic and experiential street medicine curricula, our program will offer exceptionally high quality and innovative, integrated training to primary care residents in stigma-free, community settings where patients experiencing homelessness are treated with dignity and compassion, creating an ideal training environment to better equip healthcare providers to improve care delivery for this population.