Federal Grant Enables Greater Lawrence Family Health Center to Grow Residency Program

The 10 graduates of Greater Lawrence Family Health Center’s 2021 Lawrence Family Medicine Residency are, from left, Drs. Layla Cavitt, Rebecca Lee, Tuhin Roy, Jamie Ellis, Elie Ata, Sumana Setty, Caroline Komanecky, Yeri Park, Jennifer Wolf and Julia Cooper. Courtesy photograph.)

The Lawrence Family Medicine Residency program is growing to 48 physicians thanks to a federal grant.

Greater Lawrence Family Health Center, which became the first federally-qualified community health center in the U.S. in 1994 to host a teaching residency program, adds eight more doctors. The program is affiliated with Lawrence General Hospital.

“The Teaching Health Center Graduate Medical Education Award from the Health Resources and Services Administration allows Lawrence Family Medicine Residency to further its mission to train full-spectrum family physicians to work in underserved and vulnerable communities,” said Dr. Wendy Barr, residency director and vice president of clinical education at the Health Center.

“The last two years have clearly shown us the need for increasing the number of comprehensively trained family physicians who can flexibly meet the needs of their communities,” Barr said. “We are proud to be able to further innovate and train physicians to serve Lawrence and other similar communities.”

While most family medicine residency programs are three years in length, the Lawrence program is a four-year training program that is part of a national pilot looking at training innovation. Residents spend an extra year of training to further expand their scope of practice, particularly in an area of concentration, and to develop further expertise in population health, health systems management and leadership and integrating that care into communities. Resident physicians also participate in a nationally recognized curriculum where they learn to speak and provide medical care in Spanish. The goal of the training program is to train family physicians who provide comprehensive primary care to vulnerable populations and can improve the health and health equity of these communities.

Barr said the class size for incoming residents increases from 10 to 12 physicians, and the program is currently interviewing for the Class of 2026. With this grant and expansion, from 2009 to 2025 there will be double the number of residents training at the Health Center and 50% more family physicians graduating from the program per year.

Comments are closed.