The Department of Family and Community Medicine (FCM) was one of the first academic family medicine departments in the country and has innovated in clinical care, education, research, and community engagement for over fifty years. Our greatest strength is the diversity of our community. We acknowledge that we are working in and living on the ancestral lands of the Pueblo, Navajo, and Apache peoples who have lived here since time immemorial, and we strive to embrace the implications of this acknowledgment.
We are a passionate department that embraces the principles and practices of social accountability–the social contract that medicine has with society.
Our mission is to improve the health and well-being of the populations of New Mexico and beyond by centering diversity and equity, providing excellent patient-centered care and advancing community-engaged, inclusive, and responsive education and research.
We envision a future where every individual and community have access to high-quality, comprehensive health care which in turn promotes a healthier, more just society. Our vision as the Department of Family and Community Medicine is to be a joyful, inclusive, and effective department where people have the knowledge, resources and tools to effectively move toward health equity with and for all New Mexicans.
We Innovate
Our clinicians work in interprofessional teams who care for over 18,500 medically housed patients and attend to not only their physical and mental maladies but also their upstream social and structural drivers of health. We are proud of our innovative models of care that embrace the breadth and depth of family medicine as a holistic specialty that can serve multigenerational families across the lifespan through a trauma-informed, asset-based perspective.
We Investigate
FCM is one of the nation’s top academic research departments in family medicine, with almost $20 million in annual grants and contracts that emphasize health equity research. Our faculty have expertise in maternal child health, addiction medicine, sports medicine, social care, health services research, primary care outcomes, community-engaged research, and patient experience research.
We Educate
In the late 1970s, our UNM Primary Care Curriculum became a model for problem-based learning that was adopted by the World Health Organization, thus, influencing medical education around the globe. Today, we continue to develop innovative curricula around the intersection of primary care and public health; culturally effective care, particularly as it relates to the people, history, culture, and environment of New Mexico; and the art and science that shapes the complex, comprehensive, and beautiful practice of family medicine. It should, thus, be no surprise that we are one of the nation’s top-ranked rural and family medicine programs. With over 500 graduates since 1973, our family medicine residency is one of the largest in the country, including support of the country’s first Indian Health Service residency in Shiprock, NM. Our fellowships in addiction medicine, sports medicine, and maternal child health attract candidates nationwide. We also take pride in the talented graduates of our growing Physician Assistant Program, who have been critical in helping address workforce shortages across rural New Mexico.
We Lead
DFCM faculty are key institutional leaders of several critical centers and offices, including the Clinical Translational Science Center, the Center for Native American Health, the Office of Community Health, our School of Medicine and Health Science Centers’ Offices for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, and the Area Health Education Center (AHEC).
I am deeply honored to serve as Chair of this storied department, whose faculty and founder profoundly influenced me when I visited as a 4th-year medical student from New York City in 1995. As the daughter of immigrants who grew up in rural America, I have devoted my career to caring for underserved and historically marginalized populations and devoted much of my work as an academic toward developing tools and resources to promote health equity. I hope to continue to support and advance our department’s commitment to promoting justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion across all our mission areas of clinical care, education, research, and community engagement. As we embark upon the next fifty years of service, workforce development, scholarship, and partnerships, we will continue to advance health and health equity across the Land of Enchantment and beyond.
| Jennifer Edgoose, MD, MPH |
| Professor and Chair |