About Us
The Department of Community Medicine is well known for its value-based education and contribution to all strata of the society.
Through teaching and training, and service and research initiatives, the Department contributes significantly to developing empowered physicians of first contact.
The teaching faculty are specialists in various domains with many of them holding additional degrees (DNB, NAMS and PhD). The department is aligned to the institutional objectives of achieving highest standards in medical education, research, and service; and thereby contributing enormously to the institution and the community.
Highlights
Teaching and learning:
Apart from teaching medical undergraduates and postgraduates, the department offers training for other courses such as MPH, BPT, PharmD and PGDGM, CHCWM of IGNOU. The medical undergraduates are taught community medicine right from their first year till final year with three months’ internship training. In addition to innovative teaching-learning programmes incorporated in CBME curriculum, the department provides field exposure to students through implementation of Community based training programme (CBTP) since 2004 which is now interdisciplinary (IDCBTP); and the Family Adoption Programme (2022).
By virtue of training rigour, the Community medicine postgraduate program of Ramaiah Medical college has attracted students from far and wide. It was started in 1993 with one student intake and has increased to three PG seats per year since 1998. Till date, more than 80 postgraduates have completed the course and are well placed in various academic, research and administrative positions.
Research
The Department of Community Medicine is at the forefront of promoting and conducting community based research in public health. The department has many projects to its credit funded by national and international agencies such as Indian Council for Medical Research, Government of Karnataka, Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences, State TB Cell and UN Industrial Development Organization. The research carried out by the department is diverse covering academic, epidemiological, implementation, operations and action research. As on 2022, the department has five completed and four ongoing ICMR projects. Outcome from these research projects have been translated into knowledge dissemination with more than 35 national and international publications in the last 5 years. The department also encourages undergraduate and postgraduates to undertake short term research projects.
Service
The department works closely with the government agencies and is committed in providing services to the underserved populations through various activities. The department is actively involved in running of services at two health centres at rural areas (Avathi & Kaiwara) and two at urban areas (Mathikere and Nethaji Circle). These centres provide primary healthcare services to the rural and urban poor population respectively.
The department conducts regular non-communicable disease (NCD) camps in its urban field area with provision of free treatment and follow-up. The department has adopted four old age homes in the urban area and one in the rural area each with 30 -50 inmates who are provided with free monthly health check-up and treatment. In liaison with Government and NGOs, the department conducts school health check-ups and health education both in rural and urban schools.
The department deep-dived into the management of the COVID-19 pandemic by providing technical support to the government, capacity building of healthcare workers, community awareness, vaccination services and surveillance activities.
The department has been actively involved in observing the various health days such as World Health Day, World Environment Day, World Breastfeeding Week and World TB Day. The department has been awarded consistently for the last four years for the best celebration of World Breastfeeding week since 2019.
Some of the other distinct community service oriented projects of the department in rural area are establishment of Deflouridation plant and Spandana School at Kaiwara. Deflouridation plant was established in Kaiwara in 2010 to tackle the widespread problem of fluorosis providing 25 litres of safe & wholesome water for a mere Rs.2 to the community. The department supports the running of Spandana school at Kaiwara since 2006 which is meant for hearing impaired and mentally challenged children coming from around 15-18 villages. Currently, 35 children are enrolled and are provided with life skills training.
Biomedical Waste Management
The department is a pioneer in the field of Biomedical waste management with a dedicated Healthcare Waste Management Cell (HCWMCell) established in the year 1995. The HCWMCell has contributed in formulating the revised biomedical waste management rules and been involved in advocacy in waste management. The department with its expertise has reached 11 countries in the south-east Asian and African region. The department had also bagged the prestigious UNIDO project funded by Global Environment Facility (GEF) for training component of Environmentally sound management of medical waste in India approved by MOEFCC which was implemented in five states – Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Punjab and Odisha. As part of this project, the department has designed various training manuals, posters, flipcharts and videos, conducted trainings across the country and evaluated the outcomes. The department has also extensively worked in training healthcare workers nationwide on biomedical waste management during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Message From The HoD
I am delighted to share with you all some updates and highlights from our Community Medicine Department at Ramaiah Medical College.
We at the Department of Community medicine are committed and dedicated to promoting community health and well-being through quality education, research, and service in line with the institutional objectives.
Dr. Arjunan IsaacHead - Department of Community Medicine
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