Steven K. Rothschild
Professor and Chair, Department of Family Medicine
Family Medicine is not just a medical specialty. Family Medicine is a moral concept that insists that healing requires more than just prescriptions and procedures. Family Medicine demands that we listen to our patients’ stories and that we walk alongside them in their quest for better health.
Welcome to the Rush-Esperanza Family Medicine Residency website. Since you are reading this, I am going to begin with a few assumptions about you. You are excited about becoming a family physician – but not altogether satisfied with the state of healthcare today. You believe that primary care is essential to improving the health of individuals and communities, but you doubt that medical care alone is enough. You recognize that access to health and healthcare is not provisioned equally or equitably in the US. You believe that change is needed, but not altogether sure how to achieve that change.
If my assumptions are correct, then please keep reading. Our residency has been developed by and for physicians like you. There are many outstanding family medicine residencies where you will gain the knowledge and skills needed to provide comprehensive, culturally attentive medical care to patients of all ages. You will gain that knowledge and skills here as well. But we also seek to develop outstanding family physicians who are collaborators, working alongside other health professionals and community members to overcome health inequity and improve health of those the system often neglects. We are a program for the physicians who never stop asking questions about the root causes of poor health. A program for troublemakers and innovators, for change agents who seek to transform health care.
The Rush Esperanza Family Medicine residency will provide you with learning opportunities born from a partnership between a world-renowned academic health center dedicated to health equity and one of the top federally qualified health centers in the country. You will learn clinical skills in a state-of-the-art clinical facility embedded in one of Chicago’s most medically vulnerable communities. You will work alongside faculty with diverse interests and skills who are passionate about helping you become the family physician you imagined yourself becoming when you first applied to medical school.
The Brazilian educator Paolo Freire wrote “Education does not change the world. Education changes people. People change the world.” Come to our program for the education; then go out and change the world.