Laura J Hu, MD, MPH
Rabkin Fellow in Medical Education
Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Assistant in Medicine, General Medicine Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital
Fellowship Project:
Public health curriculum for medical residents
Dr. Laura Hu is an internist at the Massachusetts General Hospital where she sees patients and teaches medical residents in the inpatient and outpatient settings. Dr. Hu received a bachelor's degree in science from Tufts University. Before becoming a physician, she performed bench research on Parkinson's disease at Georgetown University. She attended the University of Massachusetts Medical School and completed her residency in internal medicine at Columbia University's Presbyterian Hospital in New York. Her teaching roles at Massachusetts General Hospital include precepting residents in the outpatient clinic on a weekly basis and teaching the Women's Health and the Public Health curricula to the internal medicine residents. Dr. Hu developed the public health curriculum to teach future internists about several important public health issues including physician advocacy, healthcare issues in politics, US healthcare systems, legal health issues, and occupational and environmental health. Starting in the fall 2007, she will teach a cross-cultural curriculum to Harvard Medical School students.
As a Rabkin Fellow, Dr. Hu redesigned a previously developed curriculum to teach Medicare and Medicaid to the medical residents. In order to incorporate adult learning theories into the curriculum, she created an interactive, case-based seminar to help residents discuss and better understand Medicare and Medicaid. After performing a needs assessment, Dr. Hu employed five clinical cases to teach issues such as Medicare Parts A to D, Medicaid coverage, Free Care population qualifications, and challenges faced by the uninsured population. A secondary goal in her project was to utilize the cases to help residents understand the difficulties their patients who have Medicare and Medicaid insurance face while navigating the medical system.
