Operation House Call has been in full swing in both February and March, with classes recently taught at Harvard Medical School, Boston University School of Medicine, and UMass Chan Medical School.
Harvard Medical School
The Arc’s Operation House Call team recently kicked off our fifth year of programming at Harvard Medical School. Our OHC families are lived experience experts, teaching medical students how to be agents of change in the clinical setting.
OHC has been steadily growing our program for the last 15 years, partnering with all Massachusetts medical schools and passing legislation in 2023 to codify the program into law.
Opening this session, OHC alum Michael Chen shared a quote from the legendary Judy Heumann and it couldn’t be more fitting: “Change never happens at the pace we think it should. It happens over years of people joining together, strategizing, sharing, and pulling all the levers they possibly can. Gradually, excruciatingly slowly, things start to happen, and then suddenly, seemingly out of the blue, something will tip.”
Next up for these medical students is the powerful home visit experience with our OHC host families. These visits provide a window into the families’ lives, offering deep understanding and insights that will fundamentally shape their future practices as physicians.
Boston University School of Medicine and UMass Chan Medical School
OHC wrapped up the academic year at Boston University School of Medicine on Monday, March 2. We are so grateful that OHC is a foundational piece of medical students’ learning there, incorporated during their third-year pediatric rotation. Boston University is the original home of OHC. This year, we taught over 150 students in the classroom and over 40 host families continued their learning in home visits.
27 first-year medical students at UMass Chan Medical School had their OHC class on Wednesday, March 4 and will head into the community to meet with their home visit hosts soon.
Our unique curriculum is driven by the power of learning directly from families and individuals. OHC will have a lasting impact on these students and their future clinical practice.
