From leadership research to district action: Operationalizing a 3-year standalone, accelerated medical school curriculum to nurture physicians to become primary care and health system leaders

AI-assisted editorial implementation guide. Proposed district actions are separate from the original authors’ findings and recommendations. Independent peer review of this guide is not asserted.

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Evidence and transfer

Education-related source: verify which participants, institutions and outcomes were actually studied before district adoption. Source publication type: research-article. License and identity checks do not establish study quality or causality.

Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the source license:

Abstract The United States faces a shortage of primary care physicians. To address this, there have been pioneering efforts to develop accelerated pathways with a primary care focused curriculum for undergraduate medical education. The New York University Grossman Long Island School of Medicine (NYU GLISOM) was conceptualized as the first standalone, accelerated, tuition-free program in the US in over 100 years, with mission-centered curriculum on primary care and health system leadership. The aim of this article is to map the process for the development of a three-year integrated curriculum, describe the pedagogical approach that guided the design of the longitudinal courses, share the student and faculty’s perspective about the curriculum, and describe the early outcomes of the first two graduate classes. A major key driver for curricular design is integrating longitudinal courses of Clinical Ambulatory Practice Experience (CAPE), Health Systems Science (HSS), and Learning Community - Social Sciences, Humanities, Ethics and Professionalism (LC-SHEP) over three years and active learning through Problem Based Learning (PBL). We have successfully operationalized an accelerated, standalone, integrated medical school curriculum mission-centered on primary care and health system leadership. Our outcomes reveal a higher percentage (76% N =45) of NYU GLISOM students entering primary care compared to national benchmarks. The integration of the longitudinal courses of HSS, LC-SHEP, and CAPE is a key pillar to reinforce the tenants of primary care and health system leadership. Focused interview of graduates from the pioneer cohort consistently stated that the longitudinal courses prepared them well for residency in primary care and as a health systems’ change agent. Despite the challenges of an accelerated program, NYU GLISOM successfully integrated the longitudinal courses with optimal performance and achievement of educational program objectives. Our experience can serve as a model for innovation and design of an accelerated three-year primary care curriculum. Keywords: Primary care, accelerated medical school pathway, health systems science, problem based learning, continuous ambulatory practice experience, social science, humanities, curriculum development, undergraduate medical education, longitudinal integration

Study methods

Our major active learning approach centers on PBL. PBL cases were adapted from real life clinical scenarios, integrating learning objectives from HSS in every case. Small group discussion, workshop, Case or Team-based learning, research projects, and reflection were also employed in HSS and LC- SHEP.

Limitations

No passage was selected automatically. Inspect the complete source before adopting a practice.

A 90-day district inquiry

Days 1–15 · Appraise. Read the source methods, recruitment, comparator, outcomes and limitations. Record how the study setting differs from your district and which claim the design can support.
Days 16–30 · Design. Choose one school improvement question with teachers. Protect a short shared planning cycle, agree an instructional change and use a common rubric for examining student work. Agree participation, privacy protections, baseline and stopping rules before starting.
Days 31–60 · Observe. Collect the pre-agreed measures, keep a log of implementation changes and invite confidential voluntary feedback. Preserve existing support for staff and learners.
Days 61–90 · Decide. Review implementation fidelity, teacher time and independently scored student work against a recorded baseline. Examine access differences and competing explanations before attributing changes to leadership. Make a dated decision to stop, revise or extend the inquiry.

Board decision brief

Present the local problem, source setting, evidence limits, intervention, responsible owner, total cost, measured changes and uncertainty. Separate staff perceptions, implementation measures and student learning outcomes.

Attribution and reuse

Maria Lyn Quintos-Alagheband; Orla O’Donoghue; Gladys M Ayala; Steven Carsons; Nobuyuki Miyawaki; Arsenia Asuncion; Francis Faustino; Patricia Janicke; Jeffrey Berger; Dana Ribeiro Miller; Clothilde Castiglia; Isabella Harnick; Steven Shelov. Operationalizing a 3-year standalone, accelerated medical school curriculum to nurture physicians to become primary care and health system leaders. Medical Education Online (2024-06-19). https://doi.org/10.1080/10872981.2024.2367821

Prepared 2026-11-07. Source authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract and source passages are attributed extracts; this editorial guide is offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license.