The fellowship program sits within its corresponding educational and academic home, the Preventive Medicine Enhancement for Maine program (PrevME) in the interdisciplinary Division of Community Health and Preventive Medicine (a collaboration of the MHMMC family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics and psychiatry departments).
The PrevME program incorporates substantive enhancements to required curriculum for our fellows, and has benefitted our organization and other learners, as well as the community at large, through an array of didactics, conferences and educational and clinical innovation programs, including those displayed below:
Educational and Clinical Domains for Fellowship Involvement
Lifestyle Medicine
- Lifestyle & well-being group medical visit (virtual)
- Food for health and healing
- Culinary medicine (Health Meets Food)
- Cooking matters
- Food security
- Physical literacy
Community Informed Care Initiatives (CICI)
- Community health workers
- Ask the Doc
- IMPaCT
- Project ECHO
Public Health Emergency Preparedness
- Pandemic response
- Pandemic recovery
- Workplace and shelter safety
- Immunization and scientific literacy
Substance Use Disorder (SUD)
- Addiction medicine basics in primary care
- Medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD)
- SUD prevention and treatment
Our Work
PrevME is the academic home for the Leadership in Preventive Medicine fellows and as such is integrated into clinical care and GME education in all its projects.
All our team members are actively engaged in scholarship activities, presenting and publishing their work at regional and national conferences. We have strong ties to the MaineHealth Institute for Research and the Center for Integrative Population Health Research. We also collaborate with Dartmouth, the University of Vermont, and the Family Medicine residency programs in Maine.
We understand the importance of health equity in clinical care, but also know the importance of social determinants of health for every individual. We promote implicit bias training for all providers, cultural competency training for all clinicians, and population health needs assessments for all clinical practices.
Over the next four years, we will partner with FQHC’s to dive into population health factors that affect their communities and develop PDSA cycles and solutions to overcome health barriers. We will address rural populations, minority populations, immigrant populations and elderly populations in our state.
Our Approach
- Health and Well-being: While working to improve the health of our patients, we also seek to promote and sustain the well-being of our providers and staff. We strive to build strong teams and a supportive community to make our work meaningful and fun.
- Advocacy and Equity: we advocate for improved access to high quality care through our clinical, education and research activities. To achieve health equity and social justice, we engage in health policy, public health, and population health initiatives. We are committed to creating and supporting a diverse and inclusive environment for all.
- Community Engagement: we recognize that health care is only one determinant of health and requires reaching beyond the walls of our clinical settings. We actively seek to create respectful and sustainable community partnerships to improve the health of under-resourced and vulnerable populations.
- Systems Thinking: we see our individual patients as part of their families, communities and broader ecosystems. We strive to advance primary care at the patient, clinic, and system level to achieve the quadruple aim.
- Innovation and Inquiry: by applying inquiry to all that we do, we pursue new ways of thinking, seeing, and doing to bring about innovation and transformation. We are committed to developing new initiatives that advance primary and community care.