Should Family Medicine Embrace Community Involvement and Engagement?

Abstract

Family medicine takes a whole-person, contextual approach to patient care, and understanding community context is important. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) definition of community, "a group of people with diverse characteristics who are linked by social ties, shared common perspectives and identity, and engagement in joint action," provides a broad conceptual framework. While community service doesn't have a standard definition, many physicians and residency training programs incorporate such activity into practice and training. Community engagement consists of ten key principles framing public health and programmatic involvement in improving the health of a community. Despite the importance of understanding the community in practice, true community engagement for contemporary family physicians, given panel size, visit volume, and documentation burden, is unrealistic as a core part of the work of most practicing family physicians.