Overview

The Department of Community Medicine provides teaching and training to Undergraduate MBBS students and Post Graduates in MD Community Medicine. It also facilitates the teaching of Para-medical, Allied Health Science, and Associate Fellow of Industrial Health (AFIH) courses. The Department has experienced faculty in addition to renowned visiting Faculties from National & International Institutes.

The department runs two full-fledged centers at Mappedu and Thirumazhisai for providing Patient care. These centers coordinate with local health agencies in the implementation of the National Health programs. The RHTC (Mappedu) functions  24x7 providing Primary Heath care and Emergency services. Besides, it is also providing specialist Consultation  (General Physician, Surgeon, Pediatrician, Dermatologist, Gynecologist, Ophthalmologist, ENT Specialist). It also extends specialist services through a dedicated Tele-medicine Unit. The UHTC(Thirumazhisai) has a fully functional DOTS center under the NTEP and actively participates in leprosy screening under the SPARSH leprosy campaign.

These centers also operate an NCD clinic and Multi-specialty clinics every week in addition to providing School Health services to the local schools. The Department has signed MOUs to provide Occupational Health Services to Industries in Kancheepuram &Thiruvallur Districts. MOUs have also been signed for providing care to the old-age homes in the area.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department has actively participated by managing the COVID HOMECARE PROGRAM, whereby, providing care to over -1100 patients in home isolation in Chennai & neighboring districts. It has also managed the POST-COVID follow-up clinic for monitoring all the Discharged patients from SMCH.

The Department regularly conducts events like Saveetha Students’ Research Project Workshop, Saveetha Community Orientation Programme (SCOPe), and Saveetha Public Health Talks for students to develop critical thinking expertise, as well as effective analytical, research, and communication skills.

The Department strives to provide the best learning opportunity to medical students through its Village Family Adoption Program-based medical education. For each batch of 250 medical students, the Institute adopts three villages. In this village, each student adopts 5 families covering the entire village. Visits are organized in the village when the students build rapport with the family members and facilitate the health examination and treatment of the villagers which is followed by a monthly visit to adopted families for the next three years. Through these visits and the village, adoption scheme students take care of the health care needs of their adopted families and learn about rural life, environmental sanitation, socio-economic conditions, and health problems of the community.

SIMATS is an approved center for running the ‘Associate Fellow of Industrial Health (AFIH) course’, which is a three-month full-time Post Graduate Certificate course in Industrial Health approved & regulated by DGFASLI (Director General of Factory Advisory Services & Labour Institutes, Govt. of India) and this is being coordinated by the department. As per Factories Act, this is a mandatory qualification for doctors working in the hazardous industry to identify and manage the occupational health disorders/ diseases encountered in various industries in the country and to manage the industrial injuries caused by chemical intoxication, in general, and in the hazardous process industry in particular.

Our MD postgraduate curriculum is based on role-oriented objectives and year- wise appropriate competencies are set down under the three domains: Cognitive, Affective, and Psychomotor to improve the employability of the student in the future as academicians, primary care physicians, scientists, research scholars, health program managers, health administrators. Elective postings are incorporated to train in health program management in National & International NGOs to meet the National and Global public health needs. External Postings to Institute of Public Health, Poonamalle, Central Leprosy Teaching and Research Institute(CLTRI) Chengalpet, and Institute of Vector Control & Zoonoses, Hosur enhances the aptitude of the postgraduate student.