PCOR fellows who wish to focus on service learning and community-based participatory research can participate in the Community Advocacy Track. This track is specifically designed to train future primary care faculty to be effective educators and researchers within community settings.

 In the Community Advocacy Track, fellows will collaborate with the nationally recognized Community and Physicians Together (CPT) program at UC Davis, directed by Dr. Richard Pan, who also directs the Community Advocacy track.  CPT is a partnership between UC Davis and community collaboratives in eight diverse neighborhoods in the Sacramento region to teach physicians-in-training how to effectively partner with community organizations to improve health.  CPT teaches residents in pediatrics, family medicine, and internal medicine.  In CPT, residents learn about the determinants of health and apply asset-based community development principles to influence social and physical environments to promote health.  Founded in 1999, CPT has received the 2005 Community Campus Partnerships in Health Award, and Dr. Pan received the 2008 Campus Compact Thomas Ehlrich Faculty Award for Service Learning for CPT.  Additional information on CPT can be found on www.cpt-online.org.

 In the Community Advocacy track, PCOR fellows will learn about our partner communities from community members and meet monthly with Dr. Pan to discuss their community experiences and readings in social epidemiology and community development.  Building on the community partnerships in CPT, Community Advocacy PCOR fellows will have the opportunity to gain skills in and perform community-participatory research as their mentored project.  They will be linked with faculty in the UC Davis Center for Reducing Health Disparities and the Community Development Graduate Group in the School of Agriculture who are involved in this research and can provide mentorship to PCOR fellows.  In addition, as part of the reciprocal relationship with our partner communities, Community Advocacy PCOR fellows will help Dr. Pan and other CPT faculty mentor residents in their community advocacy projects.  This activity can be the basis of a PCOR mentored project on service learning in medical education or on the roles physicians can play in improving community health.