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​Medical schools and teaching hospitals generally cite teaching, service and research as their core contributions. The scope of health disparities in our communities, however, suggests another vital role of teaching institutions can play social mission. What priority do our teaching institutions give to community engagement, to health disparities reduction, to the promotion of diversity, to teaching the social determinates of health? Where do these topics stand in the curriculum, admissions policy, research agenda, and business plan of medical schools and their associated hospitals? Should social mission not be the fourth leg on the stool of academic medicine? (4 18 2018 Mullan)
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Camara Phyllis Jones is research director on social determinants of health and equity in the Division of Adult and Community Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (NCCDPHP). Dr. Jones is a family physician and epidemiologist whose work focuses on the impact of racism on the health and wellbeing of the nation. She seeks to broaden the national health debate to include not only universal access to high quality health care but also attention to the social determinants of health (including poverty) and the social determinants of equity (including racism). As a methodologist, she has developed new ways for comparing full distributions of data (rather than means or proportions) in order to investigate population-level risk factors and propose population-level interventions. As a social epidemiologist, her work on race-associated differences in health outcomes goes beyond documenting those differences to vigorously investigating the structural causes of the differences. As a teacher, her allegories on race and racism illuminate topics that are otherwise difficult for many Americans to understand or discuss.

Fitzhugh Mullan, MD, is the Murdock Head Professor of Medicine and Health Policy and a
professor of Pediatrics at the George Washington University. His research and policy work focus on US and international health workforce issues including the Beyond Flexner Study, the Medical Education Futures Study, and the Sub-Saharan African Medical School Study. He is a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Chicago Medical School and served 23 years in the United States Public Health Service, starting as a physician in the National Health Service Corps in New Mexico and later as director of the program. Subsequently, he directed the Bureau of Health Professions and attained the rank of Assistant Surgeon General. He also served as the Secretary of Health and Environment for the state of New Mexico. He has written widely for professional and general audiences. His books include White Coat, Clenched Fist: The Political Education of an American Physician and Big Doctoring: Profiles in Primary Care. He is an appointed commissioner of the National Health Care Workforce Commission, the Founding President of the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship, the Founding Board Chair of Seed Global Health, and a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

Erik Porfeli, Ph.D. is the Assistant Dean for Community Engagement and Admissions and Associate Professor of Family and Community Medicine in the College of Medicine at NEOMED. His team directs a portfolio of programs to advance the health and economic vitality of Ohio through health professions educational pathways and grassroots community health initiatives. This portfolio engages over 1,500 youth in Ohio and is being disseminated to other universities across the country. Dr. Porfeli collaborates with Ohio universities and colleges to enact Baccalaureate and Post-Baccalaureate to MD degree programs and orchestrates eight holistic admissions processes to compose a student body aligned with the mission of the College of Medicine. He leads the development of a longitudinal evaluation system for the Medical College to discover if and how the student body develops from admissions to graduation relative to its mission. This work has been translated into a learning analytics system to predict student performance before it occurs and to offer proactive support to students facing academic challenges. Dr. Porfeli is an internationally-recognized scholar in the area of lifespan career development. His research has been translated into over 50 publications and 60 domestic and international presentations.

Dr. Rishi Manchanda is President and Founder of HealthBegins, a startup that transforms the
health of vulnerable communities through innovative education, technology, and consultancy
services. As an ‘upstreamist’ physician and public health innovator, his work and expertise focuses on systems design to improve primary care, the social and environmental conditions that make people sick, and health and human rights. Dr. Manchanda serves as the medical director of a clinic for high-utilizer homeless veterans in Los Angeles. He is also the founder of RxDemocracy, a nonpartisan healthcare coalition that supports civic engagement and that has registered 30,000 voters in clinics nationwide. He previously served as the founding Director of Social Medicine at St.John’s Well Child and Family Centers, a community clinic in South Central Los Angeles. His first book The Upstream Doctors, in which he coins the term “Upstreamist” to describe an essential yet underdeveloped segment of the healthcare workforce, was released by TEDBooks in June 2013. Upstreamists are clinic-based practitioners who have the skills, tools, and authority to drive internal healthcare innovation that improves care and local social determinants of health.