On May 27, 2021, The Primary Care Innovation (PCI) program hosted the Fourth Annual Primary Care & Hospital Medicine Innovations Symposium virtually with over 200 attendees nationwide. This year the PCI program provided $175,000 to fund 11 innovative interdisciplinary projects across the campus consisting of 8 faculty, 1 resident, and 2 student awardees in various topics related to primary care. With opening remarks from Dr. Fred Pelzman, Dr. Augustine M.K. Choi, and Dr. Judy Tung, the symposium featured a new format including two prominent keynote speakers: Andrea Cherrington, M.D., Professor, Division of Preventive Medicine, University of Alabama Birmingham, and Robert Wachter, M.D., Professor and Chair, Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco. A panel discussion with keynote speakers was moderated by Dr. Monika Safford, Chief, Division of General Internal Medicine, WDOM, on reflections on primary care and hospital medicine in the current state.
Other highlights included past competitive seed grant presentations, abstract presentations, and compelling poster sessions from abstracts which were selected during an open call or earlier this year. This year’s event showcased 11 posters from medical students, residents, fellows, and faculty from Weill Cornell Medicine, New-York Presbyterian, Global Health, Pediatrics, Internal Medicine, and ITS. The event concluded with closing remarks and a raffle giveaway by Dr. Monika Safford.
The overall goal of the symposium was to get to know others with similar interests and to become familiar with the ongoing innovative work on-campus and off-campus in the primary care arena. Due to overwhelming popularity and requests for similar events across departments, the symposium was co-sponsored by the Department of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medicine.
