The water crisis in Flint and how a community-based medical school came to the rescue

April 30, 2016 - AAMC

Aron Sousa, MD, interim dean at MSU’s medical school, said that a community participatory infrastructure had been in place before the crisis. In 2012, two years before the water became toxic, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation awarded the college a $2.8 million planning grant to expand its medical education and public health research in Flint. With this funding, the college formed an advisory committee to work with hospital partners and more than 80 community organizations, government agencies, and the business community to examine social determinants of health in Flint and how to reduce health disparities.