THE CLUSTER COMMITTEE - SETTING THE STAGE FOR COMMUNITY-RESPONSIVE CARE

Recent reviews of medical education at the undergraduate and graduate level call for a greater emphasis on community-relevant teaching and development of partnerships between providers, academic health centers, and the community. The cluster committee, developed by the Center for Community Responsive Care, Inc., sets the stage. The cluster committee is an activity in which preventive medicine residents and fellows are trained in a community setting to participate in community-responsive health care. It is designed to meet the following goals: initiate the fellow in the steps of community-oriented primary care (COPC); develop a fellow's leadership skills; encourage relationships and coalitions within the community and among providers; and bring together the perspectives of community members, public health practitioners, academicians, and local clinicians regarding community health, as well as teach each about COPC. This article describes the cluster committee process, provides examples of a series of meetings, and presents lessons learned from the first six years of implementation.