Puentes de Salud
Title: Community Health Case Management & Quality Improvement
Student Interns:
Sophie Marcom
University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine
Academic Preceptor:
Hillary R. Bogner, MD, MSCE
University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine
Donald L. Boyer, MD, MSEd
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
Community Preceptor:
Pablo Abrante
Puentes de Salud
Sharon Katzenbach, MSN, CNRP
Puentes de Salud
Daphne Owen, MD
Puentes de Salud
Orfelina Payne
Puentes de Salud
Annette Silva, RN
Puentes de Salud
Community Site:
Puentes de Salud partners with community members, local public schools, universities, and other nonprofit organizations to address the adverse structural, economic, and social conditions that profoundly affect the prosperity of the Latine community in Philadelphia.
Team’s Experience:
The Bridging the Gaps intern assisted with various projects at Puentes de Salud, including quality improvement for the Complex Care Team notes, case management for patients with diabetes, research on organizations that donate medical supplies to free clinics, and medical interpretation. One of the intern’s most significant projects was creating the new Complex Care notes protocol, presenting it to the rest of the volunteers, and creating a training video for future volunteers. This standardization of the Complex Care notes is expected to make a long-term impact and improve communication between volunteers and providers. The intern also worked closely with patients with complex social situations to identify gaps in their care and help create long-term care plans.
Reflections
This summer, I learned that attention to detail can make or break effective healthcare delivery, especially in low-resource settings. I came to my internship at Puentes de Salud after a year immersed in textbooks and flashcards, where my exposure to social determinants of health was limited to small-group discussions and hypothetical scenarios. At Puentes, I saw firsthand the limits of classroom learning for truly understanding barriers to care.
My work on quality improvement for the Complex Care program taught me that clear, standardized channels of communication can prevent gaps in care. My work in case management and medical interpretation taught me the importance of involving patients in their own care decisions — asking questions that let them voice their priorities and concerns and using teach-back methods to confirm they understood the reasoning behind each decision.
Sophie Marcom
Partners
