New Jersey Medical School - Department of Preventive Medicine and Community Health

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Department:

Chairperson's Office
Faculty
Residency and Fellowship

Divisions :

Biostatistics and Epidemiology
General Preventive Medicine and International Health
Nutrition and Aging

Education :

First Year Medical School
Summer Research Opportunities
Second Year Medical School
Electives

Programs & Centers :

Clinical
Research

Seminars :

Statistics for Lunch
Symposia

The Department has been functioning in Newark for 30 years. Initially we focused on developing community health centers and on coordination of all Newark drug abuse treatment programs. Subsequently we screened virtually all Newark children at high risk for lead intoxication. Thereafter we became involved in the development of a health promotion-disease prevention program that could be adopted as national policy. That program, called Health-Full-Life, is now New Jersey law and must be offered by every HMO, managed care organization and health insurer. Other major interests are:

Nutritional modification of the aging process

Lead poisoning and its interrelationship with calcium intake

Variables relating to quality of life in older persons

Variables promoting or retarding heterosexual spread of HIV

Cancer epidemiology

How clinical health care decisions are prioritized

Vitamin nutriture

The societal aspects of emerging and re-emerging infections

The Department is heavily involved in teaching and is deeply interested in educational change to teach the students to think like futurists, to get them focused on major societal issues and to instill in students a long term commitment to helping solve or ameliorate these problems. We have initiated a mini-course for first and second year students titled Medicine, Society and the Future: The Doctor as a Constructive Activist. We would like to see similar courses on societal issues in every college and high school.