Family Medicine Interest Group (FMIG)
The Department of Family and Community Medicine works closely with the Feinberg School of Medicine's Family Medicine Interest Group, which is led by Feinberg medical students.
Goals
- To expose students to the interaction between primary care and the medical community
- To help students gain a better understanding of determinants of health and how they can be approached from a primary care standpoint
- To build awareness about the specialty of family medicine and primary care, and connect students with University and Community leaders in this area
- To begin to develop the skills required to become a family medicine physician through experiential and classroom learning
- To provide students access and exposure to community health centers, and help them to understand the role they play in patient health care
FMIG Student Leaders:
Julia Helena Walczak: julia.walczak@northwestern.edu
Tanvi Nayak: tanvi.nayak@northwestern.edu
FMIG Faculty Advisor:
Dr. Anna Shannahan is the FMIG Faculty Advisor as well as a Family Medicine faculty member in the department. She is available during office hours to talk to students about family medicine and will be happy to answer any questions about family medicine.
Office location:
Department of Family and Community Medicine
710 N. Lake Shore Drive, Abbott Hall, 4th floor
Chicago, IL 60611
To schedule an appointment:
Any Feinberg students who would like to schedule a meeting with Dr. Shannahan please contact the
Department of Family Medicine at 312.503.1273 or fcm@northwestern.edu.
FMIG Listserv
Our department has an FMIG listserv to keep students interested in family medicine updated. If you would like to join the listserv and are a Feinberg student, please email fcm@northwestern.edu.
Family Medicine as a Career
We invite you to continue to explore family medicine as a career. Family Medicine’s national association, the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), offers many great resources that give more in‐depth knowledge about the specialty and what it means to spend your life as a family physician. For example, the webcast, “What is Family Medicine?”, spotlights a typical day as a family physician, discusses the variety of family medicine career options as well as income and lifestyle expectations.
The recorded webcast can be found at: https://bit.ly/38PrYZx
The AAFP also provides a comprehensive list of family medicine residency programs.
If you would like to pursue additional family medicine opportunities while in medical school, please consider some of the national events and scholarships listed below that can help you get more involved:
Pisacano Scholars Leadership Scholarship
o Apply online www.pisacano.org/ due March 1st
o The Pisacano Leadership Foundation seeks to enhance the specialty of family medicine by identifying and promoting the development of the future leaders in the most comprehensive primary care field.
o The program is designed to develop future leaders in Family Medicine. Although scholarships are intended to reduce the level of medical‐school‐related debt, financial need is not a consideration. The scholarship award of up to $28,000 for each year will be paid in August/September to those scholars successfully completing a family medicine residency program.
AAFP National Conference
o National Conference is the place for medical students to learn more about family medicine, explore residency programs, and network within the family medicine community. There are great workshops and procedural skills courses to attend and opportunities to get involved in national leadership positions (Student Congress) and within IAFP (Illinois Academy of Family Physicians). This annual conference is held in Kansas City, MO during late July or early August. There are scholarship opportunities to help fund your travel expenses to national conference listed below:
Family Medicine Leads (FML) Scholarship for National Conference
This is offered through the American Academy of Family Physicians Foundation. They focus on filling the workforce pipeline with the best and the brightest, as well as supporting the development of future family medicine leaders. Over 200 scholarships will be awarded to attend National Conference. The $600 scholarship is intended to help reduce out‐of‐pocket expenses (registration, travel, lodging, meals) to attend National Conference. May 1st is the deadline for all applications with the exception of the FML emerging leader scholarship (March 1st deadline). All scholarship applications through FML can be found on the following link: https://bit.ly/3lnsPpq
All FML scholarship opportunities listed on this site include the Early Career Student (Rising M1‐M3) with a May 1st deadline, Student (Rising M4) or Resident Primary Care Champion Scholarship (May 1st deadline), Family Medicine Interest Group Leaders (May 1st deadline), Family Medicine Leads Emerging Leader Institute Scholarship (March 1st deadline). All scholarship checks are awarded at National Conference. If you are unable to attend the Conference, your scholarship will be forfeited.
Northwestern Department of Family Medicine encourages students interested in family medicine to attend the conference and will provide partial support to anyone who would like to attend, provided the student has applied for all of the applicable FML scholarships (listed above) to attend. If interested in Northwestern Department of Family Medicine National Conference support and you are a Feinberg student, please complete our application at https://goo.gl/forms/FlEXiOuWqtAYcZng1 by May 15th. If you are unable to attend the Conference, your scholarship will be forfeited.
Please remember our door is always open. We have much to share with you in our department including our current research projects, community efforts in conjunction with our three residency programs (Humboldt Park, Lake Forest, and Delnor residency programs) and primary care initiatives. If you would like to meet with our Chair, Dr. Deborah S. Clements, or any of our family medicine faculty, please do not hesitate to contact the department at 312.503.1273 or fcm@northwestern.edu. We are always happy to meet with anyone who would like to discuss family medicine.