Integrating community oriented primary care into training and practice: a view from the Bronx

Community oriented primary care (COPC) brings together the pragmatics of clinical practice with the population principles of epidemiology and public health. This article describes the efforts of the residency program in social medicine at Montefiore Medical Center to integrate COPC into the training of residents and medical students. There are four formal COPC curriculum components: the first year orientation, the core curriculum in social medicine, social medicine projects, and faculty and health center service projects. The obstacles to COPC training and practice and the lessons learned from implementation are described.