Destination Excellence: New Clinical Partnerships Inspire MD Students, Aid Community Organizations: Pulse Spring 2025

To help stabilize health care for underserved patients and medical education for Drexel students, and to build community coalition, Annette Gadegbeku, MD, senior associate dean of community health and inclusive excellence, began working to create a consortium of Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs). FQHCs are community-based health care organizations that provide comprehensive primary care and support services to underserved populations, caring for patients regardless of their insurance coverage or ability to pay. Her vision is to have FQHC partners in the area join a consortium with the College of Medicine, becoming preclinical and clinical rotation sites for MD program students while also benefiting from students’ assistance in patient care. The initiative aims to help better serve these communities and retain medical students as professionals interested in providing care for underserved patients.

Gadegbeku points out the mutual benefits of these relationships. “Early exposure to working with an FQHC means students may find a deep connection to the community and interest in the services provided,” she says. “We hope to develop providers who are willing to stay in underserved communities and provide care for those who are marginalized. I thought this FQHC consortium would be a great way to foster interest and a desire to build their careers in these or similar communities.”

Gadegbeku is also an associate professor and chief of the Division of Community Health in the Department of Family, Community & Preventive Medicine. She brings expertise in underserved community medicine and in medical education to the consortium project.

The initiative began by partnering with two local FQHCs, the Greater Philadelphia Health Alliance (GPHA) and Spectrum Health Services Inc. MD program students have gained valuable clinical experience while assisting these programs, with positive feedback from program leaders.

The work of the FQHC consortium aligns well with existing College of Medicine programs like Bridging the Gaps, which links students to educational opportunities working with underserved communities, and the Health Advocacy Practicum (HAP), a core course focused on health equity for all first- and second-year Drexel medical students. Both programs are part of the College’s efforts to provide future physicians with experience working with underserved patients.

In summer 2024, students began third- and fourth-year clinical rotations at GPHA. In fall 2024, some first-year MD students began yearlong HAP placements at both FQHCs. Rising second-year MD students were placed at the consortium’s two FQHCs for Bridging the Gaps community health internships over the summer, as well. Gadegbeku says the response was positive.

“The medical director we work with was very pleased with our students and was excited to have them, and they were very helpful to her,” she says. “The students said they also had a really great experience and learned a lot from being there at the center.” Gadegbeku sees enormous value in placing future physicians in their patients’ communities. “The biggest benefit for students is to learn from the communities that they’re engaging with,” she says. “There are a lot of unwritten lessons students learn: about themselves, about how to serve, about people, about differences, about how to communicate, about how to meet people where they are.”

Partnerships like the FQHC consortium help build positive, respectful, mutually beneficial relationships between providers and patients, according to Gadegbeku. “It’s important that community engagement opportunities are not just about going into communities and enforcing on them what we think they need,” she says. “It’s about partnering with them to not only assess what they need, but also to provide what they need and do it in a mutually beneficial way.”