Transforming Community Health and Primary Care Education Using Clinical and Administrative Data and Geographic Information Systems

Community-oriented primary care (COPC), a common model used for integrating the principles of primary care and public health, has been taught in family medicine residency programs to create community-responsive providers. As the initial step in a comprehensive COPC curriculum for a family medicine residency program, we used GIS maps, graphs, and tables to introduce new interns to the community served by the residency clinic. A fourteen-question pre/post test showed that interns' knowledge and understanding of the community improvement overall were deficient. Using practicebased administrative data combined with population-based data can efficiently and effectively improve interns' knowledge of the communities they serve.