Family Medicine Residency Community Involvement

Community Asset Mapping

We dedicate time for first-year residents to explore the resources, people, landmarks and culture of the Lehigh Valley through an interactive community asset-mapping assignment. Residents get to know their new communities of clinical practice through a lens that encourages both personal and professional engagement with the community.

Street Medicine Collaboration 

The residency program partners with Valley Health Partners (VHP) Street Medicine to deliver primary and urgent health care to persons experiencing homelessness in the Lehigh Valley. Under this program, the team utilizes a holistic patient-led approach to not only provide high-quality health care but also address barriers to health care access. Patients are offered numerous services and links to community partners – tele-psychiatry, mail services, care coordination, survival support, grant-funded medical respite and connection to housing services. The aim is to offer care in terms acceptable to patients in the location of their choice, whether that be in a homeless shelter, soup kitchen, on the streets, under bridges or in the woods.

VHP Street Medicine was founded on the idea that everybody matters. The team continues to focus its efforts on the unsheltered, persons living outside, by doing outreach four out of five days of the work week. Furthermore, the team offers clinics on a scheduled rotation at designated community centers, soup kitchens and homeless shelters, as well as provides support to other Lehigh Valley shelters and recovery homes on an as-needed basis.