Beyond the Basics: A Novel Approach to Integrating a Social Determinants of Health Curriculum into an Emergency Medicine Course.

"Conflicts of Interest: By the WestJEM article submission agreement, all authors are required to disclose all affiliations, funding sources and financial or management relationships that could be perceived as potential sources of bias. No author has professional or financial relationships with any companies that are relevant to this study. There are no conflicts of interest or sources of funding to declare."

"While most of the feedback toward the SDoH curriculum was positive, we faced several challenges with the implementation of this curriculum. We encountered many of the same challenges described in the literature around incorporating social medicine topics into UME, such as differing opinions on the relevance of SDoH despite the exhaustive evidence of their impact on health equity, an already dense curriculum, and varying levels of expertise from faculty. , , , , To overcome some of the challenges both faculty and students advocated for the inclusion of the SDoH curriculum, and ultimately it was approved after rigorous review by the LCOM Medical Curriculum Committee. There was also no protected time or funding for the additional workload on the administrators, faculty, or the social work team. Faculty facilitators and the social work team volunteer their time to bring this curriculum to students. We recognize volunteering additional time of already busy faculty and social workers is not sustainable. although after years of relentless advocacy from LCOM medical students, LCOM now has a director for social medicine who is responsible for leading the efforts in addressing social medicine with LCOM medical education programs."