A Message from
Nina O’Connor, MD
Professor, Family and Community Medicine
About the Department
The Department of Family & Community Medicine at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine (LKSOM) at Temple University is a diverse, engaged, and committed academic department focused on education and training, patient care, and scholarship.
Our Mission
To support the health and well-being of our diverse community by providing high quality, evidence-based, trauma-informed clinical care while training clinicians who deliver and value a team-based, interdisciplinary, population-based approach.
Education & Training
The Department of Family & Community Medicine serves essential roles in delivering innovative, evidence-based, and patient-centered education for a wide range of learners. The Department serves a major educational role at LKSOM with involvement in each of the four years of the medical school curriculum as well as in our Physician Assistant program and Temple's dental school. We serve the Health System and community through our Family Medicine Residency program. In partnership with our CME department, our department has led and lectured at the renowned biannual Temple Family Medicine Review Course. Additionally, our faculty lecture locally, regionally, and nationally.
Patient Care & Community Health
We maintain a clinical practice on the Temple University Health Sciences Campus, the home to our residency program. The department is engaged with the SouthEast Area Health Education Center (AHEC) and serves in an advisory role to Temple Emergency Action Corps's THRIVE Clinic, a student-run bridge clinic located within a local men's recovery support sheltered housing program. Additionally, the clinical practice serves as the founding home to the TRUST Clinic, Temple's office-based opioid treatment (OBOT) program.
Scholarship & Collaborations
The Department of Family & Community Medicine's faculty and learners are actively engaged in scholarship - publishing in the literature, serving leadership roles in organized medicine, serving on commissions within the City of Philadelphia, and participating in clinical and educational research. Faculty hold clinical appointments with the Center for Urban Bioethics in the Department of Urban and Population Health and work collaboratively across Temple Health and beyond, understanding that advancing our community health requires addressing psychosocial impacts on health, sensitivity to the needs of both patients and communities, and attention to the economics of health care delivery.