M.D. Program

TEACH-MS Program Curriculum

Mission: Introduce students to the TEACH-MS curriculum and prepare students for work in the community.

  • One week summer introduction to the program
  • Group bonding, meeting key faculty, getting to know the Sacramento Community
  • Required enrollment in Pre-Matatriculation Program following orientation. To learn more, visit the Pre-Mat Program.

Mission: Exposure to local community through clinical engagement opportunities

  • Seminars and workshops occurring one to two times a month to develop the skills needed to treat the unique health challenges of urban underserved communities in California. This includes an understanding of social determinants of health and training on leadership skills including education and advocacy.
  • Longitudinal primary care clinical shadowing experience with physician leaders in community clinical settings.
  • Home visits with patients with HIV and their families through our community partner, Harm Reduction Services (HRS). HRS provides non-judgmental, non-threatening delivery of services and resources to injection drug users, sex workers, and sexually active youth in Sacramento.
  • Opportunity to collaborate with local community clinic to provide community/patient education.

Mission: Intensive 4 week course to reflect on issues of identity, power imbalances, and the historical contexts that can result in disparities in both health status and health-care delivery

Institute on Race and Health

The Institute on Race and Health is an intensive 4-week course, consisting of mini-lectures, community presentations, films, fieldtrips, and readings from a variety of disciplines.  In a non-confrontational environment, students explore with faculty and staff the myriad ways that race and social determinants of health differentially impact the health status and health care interactions they will encounter with our state and country’s increasingly diverse population. The Institute’s strategies take us far beyond a cultural-tourism approach to reflect together on deep issues of identity, power imbalances, and the historical contexts that can result in disparities in both health status and health-care delivery.  The Institute is offered in the summer between the first and second year of medical school. It is a requirement for all TEACH-MS students.  Stipends are available for eligible students.

Mission: Building on Year 1 community experiences and applying what was learned during Institute

In Year 2, TEACH students expand on the skills and knowledge developed in the seminars and workshops from Year 1 to develop yearlong scholarly inquiry and community engagement projects. After a year of mentorship from program faculty, students will present their projects to their UC Davis PRIME peers. Additional seminars and workshops are introduced to prepare students to transition into their clinical training in Year 3.

Clinical Clerkships

Students will spend the majority of their core clinical clerkship experiences at sites serving urban underserved patients including:

  • UC Davis Internal Medicine TEACH service in Sacramento, CA
  • Kaiser Modesto Internal Medicine in Modesto, CA
  • San Joaquin General Hospital for Labor and Delivery in Stockton, CA
  • Sacramento City Jail Gynecology clinic in Sacramento, CA
  • Methodist Hospital Family Medicine in Sacramento, CA
  • Adult Psychiatric Support Services in Sacramento, CA
  • Sacramento County Health Center Adult Medicine and Pediatrics in Sacramento, CA

Clinical sites may change based on preceptor availability, but every effort is made to arrange for alternative sites that will help students gain clinical skills to care for patients from urban underserved backgrounds.

In addition to these core clerkship experiences, TEACH students are required to enroll in one of two 2- week courses during their third or fourth year elective time. Those courses are:

  • TEACH Outpatient Internal Medicine Elective, which includes clinical experiences in addiction medicine, care for unhoused communities, and exposure to multiple local community based clinics
  • TEACH-MS Pediatric Advocacy and Community Health Clinical Didactic Elective, which offers opportunities to learn crucial skills of community engagement and advocacy for underserved pediatric patients.

Fourth year students are encouraged to contribute to the TEACH-MS program through curriculum and admissions opportunities. 

  • Doctoring 4 course - Senior TEACH-MS student who participates as facilitator to teach TEACH-MS MS1, MS2, and MS3s clinical skills and clinical reasoning (may fulfill medical school’s final requirement of a Special Study Module) 
  • Scholarly Project Option – research project related to urban underserved health or health education (will fulfill the medical school’s requirement of a Scholarly Project Option (PDF)
  • Curriculum development for TEACH-MS –  developing curriculum for the seminar series or the CVC sessions for the more junior TEACH students
  • Admissions committee – interview applicants with the PRIME/TEACH leadership for the next class of TEACH-MS

Additional Program Highlights

Clinical Skills Course

Clinical Skills is a longitudinal curriculum that runs throughout the four years of medical school at UC Davis.  The course is developed to instruct and explore, with the use of standardized patients, how we communicate with our patients, what personal and ethical responsibilities define our profession and shape our behavior as physicians. We also explore what responsibilities we have to our patients, colleagues, families, and ourselves, and how to best negotiate conflicts between these responsibilities.  TEACH- MS students are assigned to the same group for this course throughout Clinical Skills in 1st , 2nd and 3rd year  and have the opportunity to co-facilitate a TEACH Clinical Skills group in 4th year.

Interprofessional Learning Opportunities

Mentorship

  • In first 2 years: regular meetings with the program director to check-in on medical school, TEACH experience, and career guidance.
  • Assigned Big Sib (upper level student) from TEACH program
  • Community clinic preceptor assignments with physicians actively practicing in urban underserved settings.