PURCH: Population-based Urban & Rural Community Health
"The PURCH community challenges, nurtures, and inspires me."
—Emily Gang, Class of 2025
Her 1st choice - Kendal Burdick matches at Boston Children's
PURCH: Population-based Urban & Rural Community Health
Not Just For Medical Students Interested in Primary Care
Whatever medical specialty you wish to pursue, the PURCH Track's innovative and immersive approach to community engagement, health equity, clinical practice, and advocacy provides a foundation upon which to build your career.
PURCH is Built With - And For - Our Communities
PURCH: Population-based Urban & Rural Community Health
Not Just For Students For Medical Students Interested in Primary Care
Whatever medical specialty you wish to pursue, the PURCH Track's innovative and immersive approach to community engagement, health equity, clinical practice, and advocacy provides a foundation upon which to build your career.
PURCH is Built With - And For - Our Communities
PURCH Fast Facts
Be the Kind of Physician Our Communities Need
We orient your entire medical education experience around the characteristics community members told us they want in a physician—we call them the 5 PURCH principles:
Excellent Diagnosticians who are Empathetic, Reflective, Team-oriented, and Leaders who can be led.
Address Real Issues Impacting Urban and Rural Western Mass
You will collaborate with the community across all four years, learning to apply population health principles to healthcare issues—and underlying social determinants of health—common to our under-served urban and rural communities.
Be Welcomed into a Community of Practice
PURCH's smaller class size of approximately 25 medical students makes Brightwood House an exceptionally close learning community.
Our faculty, students, and community faculty share a culture of shared values built around how to put PURCH principles into action in clinical care, community engagement/advocacy, and professional activities/career growth.
Get the Clinical Experience You Want and Need
Baystate Health, the regional campus of UMass Chan Medical School in Springfield, MA, is one of the largest academic health systems in New England.
During your clinical training you will care for a patients with a large variety of medical conditions and concerns as you work on interdisciplinary clinical teams of professionals and students.
Join Us!
Learn more about the PURCH program from Raquel Belforti, DO, M.Ed, Associate Dean of Education
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