Teaching community-oriented primary care (COPC): a practical approach

To improve education in community-oriented primary care (COPC) and to promote its practice in the community, the University of California's School of Public Health in Berkeley and School of Medicine in San Francisco are collaborating in an innovative program in cooperation with several federally-funded community clinics in the San Francisco Bay Area. The School of Public Health designed a COPC track for graduate public health students from various departments of the school who wished to work in community health care. The track includes a seminar given in the spring of the students' first year in which COPC theory is taught and teams of students working with a faculty advisor and a clinic preceptor design COPC projects for the primary care sites. These projects are then implemented in the summer and fall by students who elect to use this experience to satisfy their fieldwork requirement. This paper is a report of the first year's experience with this collaborative effort.