Social Medicine

Lincoln Medical Center serves the South Bronx, a federally designated Health Professional Shortage Area. Expanding access to care is one of the challenges we work on every year, and one way we do it is through street medicine: NYC Health + Hospitals’ Street Health Outreach & Wellness (SHOW) program. Street medicine delivers health care directly to people experiencing homelessness, especially those living unsheltered — a critical public health intervention in a city with one of the largest unhoused populations in the country.

Since July 2025, Social Medicine has been a rotation within the Internal Medicine Residency Program. Residents on the rotation:

• Prepare and deliver community health education on cancer screening, management of common chronic diseases, HIV and STIs, obesity, vaccinations, nutrition, and substance use — in NYC housing developments, places of worship, colleges, homeless shelters, and drug rehabilitation centers.
• Rotate in nursing homes to learn the care of older adults with chronic conditions, supervised by certified attending physicians.
• Staff health fairs in the community, mainly at homeless shelters and housing developments.
• Carry out quality improvement and research projects related to this work.