In the past year and a half, students at the University of Arizona College of Medicine — Phoenix have spent more than 4,000 hours volunteering in the community and helping to provide medical care for low-income or uninsured people.
The Community Health Initiative — Phoenix program started in 1979 under the name Commitment to Underserved People.
After the college opened a medical campus in downtown Phoenix in 2007, CHIP became a part of the medical school experience.
Students can begin volunteering in clinics around the community as soon as they enter medical school.
There is also a Medical School Mentorship program with Bioscience High School where UA medical students volunteer to mentor high school students and help them with their coursework.
Program Coordinator Sarah Hillman and Director of Service Learning Stephanie Briney oversee CHIP, which is run primarily by student leaders who work with different locations and students to help them get involved in community volunteering.
The original CUP clinic in Tucson was a free clinic for uninsured or underinsured patients.
“At that clinic they provided free healthcare, and at the clinics we have now they are still primarily either uninsured or underinsured populations. A lot of them are in minority groups and the whole goal still is to work with people who wouldn’t have healthcare otherwise,” Briney said.
Students can begin volunteering at local clinics as soon as they enter medical school, which provides them with clinical experience most medical students typically do not get until their third or fourth year.
“It’s a student-led program,” Hillman said. “The students kind of initiate which programs they want to be involved in.”
The program offers elective credit for students who volunteer regularly through CHIP, but most students do the volunteer work for no class credit.
“They will have the opportunity to receive a certificate of distinction in service learning,” Hillman said.
Hillman said a certificate recognizing service learning can help better position students when they apply for residencies and jobs later in their education.
Second-year medical student Sravanthi Vegunta began volunteering her first semester at school and is now a student leader. Over the past two years, Vegunta has primarily volunteered at the Wesley Community and Health Center at 10th Street and Buckeye Road and the New Hope Teen Pregnancy Program on the Maricopa Medical Center campus near Roosevelt and 24th streets.
“The most personally important thing for me is that you build a sense of community on so many levels,” Vegunta said. “You feel that you’re investing your time and money into something worthwhile and you build a home in the community, as well.”
Hillman said the program continues to expand based on student interest and the growing number of students.
“For some of these programs that are very popular, there’s not even always enough spots for all of our students to volunteer in the principle programs,” Briney said. “We’re trying to develop new programs that have capacity for student volunteers.”
Hillman said the impact the student volunteers have downtown is rewarding for both the students and the community.
“They chose downtown for a reason. Phoenix was one of the largest cities in the country to not have a medical school, so that was a big push to bring a campus here and to really make sure that it focused on downtown and serving that population,” she said.
Hillman said they are also trying to get a student-run clinic started in the near future to further serve the downtown community.
“I just think that getting out in the community and volunteering really reinforces why we came to medical school in the first place,” Vegunta said.
Contact the reporter at cacoope6@asu.edu
