The Department of Family and Community Medicine is involved in teaching medical students during all years of their medical school training completed on the Rockford campus. Since the College's founding in 1972, the department has helped forge the College's medical curriculum by emphasizing the importance of primary care medicine in today's health care environment. As changes in the health care system have seen a greater emphasis placed on outpatient services and ambulatory care, the department has stressed the need to educate physicians who have the skills necessary to practice in this environment. We accomplish this through a multi-year longitudinal clerkship that takes place at our 3 university primary care clinics which are located in Mt. Morris, Rockton and Belvidere, Illinois. The Department of Family and Community Medicine is the largest department on the Rockford campus with 32 full-time, 10 part-time and 104 community/volunteer faculty members.The faculty is a large and diverse group of people who have received training at a variety of medical and graduate schools as well as postgraduate programs.

ERIC HENLEY, MD, MPH DEPARTMENT HEAD

All are individuals who have extensive experience, both as practitioners and as educators. In addition to the department's faculty physicians, all of whom are board certified, our faculty includes PhDs, PharmDs and Nurse Practitioners.

Family Practice is the only residency program in Rockford. The residency was established concurrently with the opening of the Rockford campus and has enjoyed full accreditation from the American Council of Graduate Medical Education since then. In 1995, Swedish American Health System including their 397-bed hospital entered into a formal agreement to become the sole sponsor with UIC-R of the residency.

The residency has nine residents per year of training and residency faculty consists of seven board certified family physicians, a family nurse practitioner, a PharmD, a clinical psychologist, a licensed clinical social worker and several part-time family physician preceptors. The program has been known for its strength of training in both ambulatory and hospital care with a particular strength in obstetrics.

In addition, the Department of Family and Community Medicine houses and administers an MPH program in conjunction with the UIC-School of Public Health. This endeavor began in 1997 and in 1998, the Illinois Board of Higher Education approved the application to allow the School of Public Health to offer an MPH degree on the Rockford campus. The first MPH class graduated in 2001.

This is indeed an exciting time for Family Practice. It is the medical discipline concerned with the continuing and comprehensive care of individuals and their families. More than any other specialty, the United States relies on family physicians to provide care over the most dispersed geographic areas. We are proud to contribute to its practice as educators, clinicians and researchers.

For more information on the Department of Family and Community Medicine, please contact:

Eric Henley, MD, MPH
Head
Department of Family and Community Medicine
The University of Illinois College of Medicine at Rockford
1601 Parkview Avenue
Rockford, IL 61107-1897
Phone: 815.395.5805
email: ehenley@uic.edu