Special to UM News

From left, UM President Julio Frenk, Jeri Wolfson, and Miller School Dean Pascal J. Goldschmidt at the launch event for a new initiative that will help spread the DOCS model to other medical schools.

MIAMI, Fla. (March 2, 2016) — In an effort to showcase its innovative educational model of providing quality health care to underserved communities, the Mitchell Wolfson Sr. Department of Community Service (DOCS) at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine has launched a new initiative to share its work on the national stage.

Disseminating the Model, a comprehensive website designed to spread the DOCS model to other medical schools, was unveiled at the recent event “Creating Connections: Celebrating New DOCS Initiatives,” which also served as an opportunity to recognize the many DOCS connections in the community.

“I believe a medical doctor’s most important calling is to provide care to all,” said Pascal J. Goldschmidt, dean of the Miller School of Medicine. “The members of the Mitchell Wolfson Sr. Department of Community Service make an extremely important contribution in caring for our community. Through our Disseminating the Model initiative, DOCS will have a major contribution in communities nationwide, as well.”

DOCS coordinates and executes community health initiatives to help underserved populations in South Florida. Each year, DOCS serves more than 2,000 patients through nine health fairs and weekly clinics in Monroe, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties.

Over the past few years, one of the major goals of DOCS has been to work toward creating a national consortium of medical schools that can engage in meaningful dialogue and exchange ideas about the most efficient ways to provide community service. Amar Deshpande, DOCS faculty advisor, says that with 40 years of experience in staging health fairs and running clinics, DOCS has much to offer institutions that do not have robust community service programs.

“Now that we believe we have the recipe for success, we want to share this with other schools, and leverage that dialogue not only for the purpose of disseminating this model but also for self-improvement as well,” said Deshpande, who is also associate professor of medicine, assistant dean for medical education and competency assessment, and vice chief for education in the Division of Gastroenterology.

For the 2015-2016 academic year to date, DOCS has provided health screenings and educational services for 900 patients at area health fairs. Of that total, 495 received cholesterol screenings and 140 received pap smears.

Their San Juan Bosco clinic has provided primary and subspecialty care to 316 patients this year in specialties including cardiology, gastroenterology, rheumatology, pulmonology, psychiatry, urology, and neurology. At the Lotus Wellness Center Clinic, they have seen 175 patients and have provided them with specialty care in obstetrics and gynecology, family medicine, and psychiatry.

DOCS also serves as a strong educational tool. Each year, nearly the entire Miller School student body participates in the DOCS health fairs and clinics, gaining experience, clinical skills, and mentoring from faculty and volunteer physicians.

“At the Miller School of Medicine, we pride ourselves on serving the underserved—a goal that is achieved to a great extent by our DOCS community outreach initiatives,” said Ashley Taggart, DOCS executive director. “With every patient encounter at our health fairs and clinics, students are trained to become more clinically competent and culturally sensitive individuals. The structure that DOCS provides for medical student community service opportunities is unmatched throughout the nation, and it is truly considered a gem among our medical students.”

UM President Julio Frenk said sharing the DOCS model is an “incredible example of innovation” that should be a standard for medical schools nationwide.

“The idea of starting a national consortium of medical schools to engage in dialogue and exchange ideas about bringing quality health care to underserved communities is long overdue,” Frenk said. “In addition, today we understand it is actually immersion in practice that creates the knowledge that we are reproducing when we educate students. So DOCS creates this immersive, hands-on, educational learning through service that is better for public-health minded physicians.”

The community service model that led to DOCS began in 1971 when medical students founded a health fair in Big Pine Key, Florida. The fair flourished, and in 2000 it expanded and evolved into the Department of Community Service (DOCS). In 2006 after a generous donation, DOCS was officially renamed the Mitchell Wolfson Sr. Department of Community Service.

“The tenet in our family and for the Foundation is ‘give back to the community that gives to you,’ and DOCS is a great example of this,” said Jeri Wolfson, trustee with the Mitchell Wolfson Sr. Foundation. “DOCS is the bridge to this institution and the global community, the combination of western, and more importantly, integrative health care to the public.”

Louis Wolfson, III, who is also a trustee with the Foundation, thanked the DOCS students and staff for their tireless efforts to share DOCS.

“It truly takes a village to create what has been created over the years,” Wolfson said. “In fact, it takes more than a village. It takes the University of Miami community to create what has transpired over many years. We are so thrilled, honored, and pleased that you have created such an unbelievable model, which soon will be taken throughout the United States of America. That is beyond belief, from where we started, to where we are today.”

Other Wolfson Foundation trustees on hand included Arthur Hertz, who is also a University of Miami trustee, and Joe Natoli, UM senior vice president for business and finance and chief financial officer. UM Trustee Eddie Dauer also attended the event.

The initiative to take the DOCS model nationwide resulted in a unique, interdisciplinary collaboration between the Miller School of Medicine and the UM School of Communication.

“The Miller School of Medicine and the School of Communication share a passion for doing work that makes a difference in the world,” said Gregory J. Shepherd, dean of the School of Communication. “We have invested heavily in health communication, knowing that we have an amazing partner in the Miller School.”

Several faculty members, graduate students, and staff members from the School of Communication played major roles in mapping, formulating, and visualizing DOCS proven workflows into an innovative online platform.

The collaboration includes a series of short films, or DOCSumentaries, which not only document the impact of the DOCS health fairs, weekly clinics, and other outreach and follow-up care efforts conducted in underserved South Florida communities, but also explore the underlying causes of health disparities. These films and the online platform were produced by Ali Habashi, lecturer in the Department of Cinema and Interactive Media.

“Since we began, we have made 38 short films, with a total run time of nearly four hours, and in that sense, thanks to major support by the Mitchell Wolfson Sr. Foundation, now DOCS is perhaps one of the most documented, university-based, community service programs nation-wide,” said Habashi.

Angelica Melillo Knickerbocker and Daphne Papathomas, the DOCS Media and Outreach Co-Directors, coordinated the final three DOCSumentaries. Knickerbocker recalls speaking with Jeri Wolfson about the target audience of these films. They decided on an online platform that disseminated the best practices of the last 40 years of service to the community.

“It took more than a year of reflection to discover what DOCS was really made of, and what needed to be included in our online platform,” she said. “We had to figure out how to share what we do in an effective way that would empower others to improve community service nationwide, one school at a time.”

Learn more about DOCS.