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The authors examine for relevance and current application what was learned in the building and progress of community medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, from 1968 to 1993. They look back on their twenty-five years' approach to service development, research and education in this field, as they worked in an urban-based academic medical center in New York and cooperated with universities and their schools of health sciences abroad. A claim is made that this approach, whether in the United States or abroad, while fostering community development produces a diversity of desirable population-oriented new role models for the medical profession.

This paper describes the development of consultancy groups in behavioral science, epidemiology and biostatistics, and information science in a required community medicine rotation with a twenty year history. The addition of consultants to individual student tutors and field preceptors has led to a structure which promotes student-project flexibility, development of critical assessment skills and independent learning while maximizing faculty expertise and effectiveness.

This paper describes the philosophy, process, and outcome of the integration of independent study and classroom training with existing clinical and research experiences in The Mount Sinai Medical Center Department of Community Medicine's general preventive medicine and occupational medicine residencies leading to the creation of the Master of Science in Community Medicine.