Incorporation of social medicine curriculum in academic and community health centres: a scoping review protocol

INTRODUCTION: In the field of medicine, there has been a growing understanding of the impact of social and economic inequities on patients' health outcomes. Social medicine was established with the intention of addressing these social and economic drivers of health when caring for patients. Physicians who practise social medicine aim to take an interdisciplinary and interprofessional approach to patient care with an emphasis on the promotion of health equity and patient advocacy. As the effects of social determinants of health (SDOH) on health outcomes have become more widely appreciated, medical professional organisations and accrediting bodies have advocated for formal education on the impact of SDOH in undergraduate and graduate medical curricula. The goal of this scoping review is to examine how undergraduate and graduate medical education programmes in the USA have implemented social medicine concepts into their curricula. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: The proposed scoping review will be conducted in accordance with the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology for scoping reviews. The review team worked with a medical librarian, who created a unique search for five databases (PubMed, Embase, Cochrane CENTRAL Register of Controlled Trials, ERIC and the Web of Science Core Collection). Additionally, we will conduct a grey literature search that includes medical school and residency programme websites, as well as Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), Council of Residency Directors in Emergency Medicine (CORD), Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine (AAIM) and Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) conference abstracts. Two independent reviewers will assess all articles for eligibility. Data will be extracted using the Covidence data extraction tool. We will present the results of the extraction in tabular form. Themes identified during the full-text review and data extraction process will be discussed. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: Data will be gathered from publicly accessible sources, so ethics approval is not necessary. The results will be disseminated through a peer-reviewed journal and reported at conferences related to medical education and social medicine. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: This protocol is registered on OSF (https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/7PZ8U).