Site Description
Crossroad Health Center is a Christian health organization that has dedicated itself to making health care available and affordable in Cincinnati. Crossroad's mission is to provide accessible, comprehensive health care in partnership with their patients and the community, leading to healthy, changed lives. Their Over-the-Rhine (OTR) location has a staff of seven physicians and two nurses. Most patients have incomes 100% to 200% below the Federal Poverty Level. Services offered at Crossroad include general medical care for all ages (immunizations, check-ups, management of acute and chronic problems), mental health counseling, podiatry, Spanish interpretation, and gynecologic and prenatal care.
Job Description
- Begin to understand the interplay between the social determinants of health and a patient's health behaviors (e.g., finances, nutrition, home environment, social services, access to health care).
- Gain an increased awareness of resources available to providers who care for urban, impoverished populations.
- Opportunities to shadow by asking medical providers.
- Administer a survey designed to assess the social determinants of health for the Medicare/Medicaid patients seen at CHC.
- If bilingual in Spanish, interpret for patients during the visit. (Individuals with Hispanic backgrounds comprise approximately 50% of the patient population.)
- Work on specific summer projects with the Clinical Coordinator, such as data collection/analysis on children with anemia, lead poisoning, and asthma, to improve quality of outcomes and care.
- Work Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m..
Note: Priority given to applicants that are bilingual in Spanish, have prior health clinic experience and/or have a desire to do health missions. This site welcomes interns of any religious denomination.
Intern Quote
“his summer, we were tasked with completing a chart review of Crossroad patients who had recently utilized the Emergency Department (ED). These patients received their primary care from one of five Crossroad Sites in Cincinnati - Over-the-Rhine, Crossroad-Harrison, Crossroad-West, Taft School-Based Health Center, or Rothenberg School-Based Health Center. They were seen at one of many emergency departments in the greater Cincinnati area.
The Crossroad team has noticed over the years that many of their patients overuse the ED or rely on the ED for their primary care instead of Crossroad services. This project sought to understand trends in emergency department utilization in order to better counsel Crossroad patients on proper ED use. We were interested in a number of factors, including patient demographics (age, neighborhood, predisposing health factors, and which Crossroad site was their "home" site) and characteristics of their ED visit (their chief complaint, whether they sought help from Crossroad first, whether they were hospitalized, whether follow-up was needed, and how long it had been since they were in touch with Crossroad). Our hope was to use this data to provide insight on who was inappropriately using the ED and why patients were choosing to use the ED over Crossroad to adjust Crossroad resources to better meet the needs of their patients. Overall, we sought to strengthen the relationship between Crossroad physicians and their patients while improving long-term patient outcomes.
Through this project, I benefited from a great deal of tangible experience that I will carry with me throughout the rest of my medical school journey and into my career as a physician. Primarily, I am thankful for the chance to work directly with an organization such as Crossroad that serves the Cincinnati community so faithfully. I feel I learned a great deal about public health and the social determinants of health, and I hope to use this knowledge to break down the barriers to health that my own patients face (whether those be due to language, income, immigration status, health education, health access, or something different). I was also thankful to learn more about clinical research and hone skills such as efficient chart review and data analysis which will be vital to my future career goals of incorporating public health research into a clinical practice in primary care.
Overall, I feel this project was a huge success and I am grateful to have been offered this opportunity through UHP. I hope UHP continues to partner with Crossroad in the future, and I can't wait to hear about all the great change that such a partnership continues to foster.”ing to the needs of others.”
– Joe Walden