[ Medical School Resources | Appendices | ]
The real public health problem, of course, is poverty - Wendell L. Willkie
Faculties and schools of medicine were held to be, "failing in too many instances to produce socially responsible doctors who unequivocally recognize medicine as a social good, not a commercial commodity" according to one of the Macy Foundation's National Seminars on Medical Education. The foundation suggested that a period of social service be required of all medical students to, "improve the social sensitivity of physicians."[502]
From a study in JAMA: "Lower socioeconomic status is probably the most powerful single contributor to premature morbidity and mortality, not only in the United States but worldwide."[503] Although the proportion of adult mortality attributable to poverty has increased in the last two decades, quoting from Academic Medicine, "medical encounters usually do not deal with the social causes of suffering, which leads to doctors' overlooking social change as a possible healing option; when they do consider larger social i