American Medical Student Association

Web Links

Community Outreach

• Children's Defense Fund: To leave no child behind and to ensure every child a healthy start, a head start, a fair start, a safe start and a moral start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities.
• Community-Campus Partnerships for Health: Fosters health- promoting partnerships between communities and educational insitutions.
• The Community Guide to Preventive Services: A set of recommendations, based on scientific evidence, for the use of interventions for a variety of public health topics.
• Free Clinics: Community Based Clinics for Medically Underserved and Uninsured
• Medical Student-Run Clinics of America (MSCA)
  MSCA was created to network student-run clinics across the nation in order to foster communication and allow each clinic to learn from the others. Also, the website will serve as a means for schools without a clinic to start their own.

Governmental Bodies

• US Dept. of Health and Human Services: The US government's principle agency for protecting the health of all Americans and providing essential human services.
• Administration on Aging (AOA): supports a nationwide aging network, providing services to the elderly, especially to enable them to remain independent. AoA supports some 240 million meals for the elderly each year, including home-delivered "meals on wheels," helps provide transportation and at-home services, supports ombudsman services for elderly, and provides policy leadership on aging issues.
• Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ): supports cross-cutting research on health care systems, health care quality and cost issues, and effectiveness of medical treatments.
• Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR): works with states and other federal agencies to prevent exposure to hazardous substances from waste sites. The agency conducts public health assessments, health studies, surveillance activities, and health education training in communities around waste sites on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's National Priorities List.
• Bureau of Primary Health Care: Increases access to comprehensive primary and preventive health care and to improve the health status of the underserved and vulnerable populations who experience financial, geographic or cultural barriers to care.
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): provides a system of health surveillance to monitor and prevent outbreak of diseases. With the assistance of states and other partners, CDC guards against international disease transmission, maintains national health statistics and provides for immunization services and supports research into disease and injury prevention.
• Food and Drug Administration (FDA): assures the safety of foods and cosmetics, and the safety and efficacy of pharmaceuticals, biological products and medical devices.
• Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS): administers the Medicare, Medicaid, and State Children's Health Insurance (CHIP) programs.
• Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA): helps provide health resources for medically underserved populations. HRSA supports a nationwide network of 643 community and migrant health centers, and 144 primary care programs for the homeless and residents of public housing, serving 8.1 million Americans each year. HRSA also works to build the health care workforce and maintains the National Health Service Corps, oversees the nation's organ transplantation system, works to decrease infant mortality and improve child health and provides services to people with AIDS through the Ryan White CARE Act programs.
• Indian Health Service (IHS): supports a network of 37 hospitals, 60 health centers, 3 school health centers, 46 health stations and 34 urban Indian health centers to provide services to nearly 1.5 million American Indians and Alaska Natives of 557 federally recognized tribes.
• Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA): works to improve the quality and availability of substance abuse prevention, addiction treatment and mental health services.

Health Initiatives & Health Information

• Healthy People 2020: National health promotion and disease prevention initiative to improve the health of all Americans, eliminate disparities in health, and improve years and quality of healthy life.
• Healthfinder: Gateway consumer health and human services information website.

Professional Organizations

• American College of Preventive Medicine: National society for physicians committed to disease prevention and health promotion.
• American Public Health Association: The oldest and largest organization of public health professionals in the world dedicated to influencing policies and setting priorities in public health.
• Association of Schools of Public Health: National organization representing the deans, faculty, and students of the US accredited schools of public health.
• Association of Teachers of Preventive Medicine: National professional association dedicated to advancing individual and community health promotion and disease prevention in the education of physicians and other health professionals.
• National Rural Health Association: National membership organization dedicated to the improvement of health care for rural Americans and to provide leadership on rural issues through advocacy, communications, education and research.

Working with Homeless People

• National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc.and the HCH Clinicians' Network: a national association of clinicians dedicated to combating and preventing homelessness and to improving the health and quality of life of homeless people. Student membership is $15/year.
• National Coalition for the Homeless: a national advocacy network of homeless persons, activists, service providers and others committed to ending homelessness. This web site provides extensive information on working with homeless people.

News Services

• The Kaiser Family Foundation: Authors reports, issue papers, charts and fact sheets, and conducts surveys on a variety of health topics. You can choose between daily, weekly and customized email alerts on everything from children's health to HIV/AIDS.
• CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report: Contains data on specific diseases as reported by state and territorial health departments and reports on infectious and chronic diseases, environmental hazards, natural or human-generated disasters, occupational diseases and injuries, and intentional and unintentional injuries. Also includes reports on topics of international interest and notices of events of interest to the public health community.