Lahey Clinic has launched the LEAD@Lahey track, a new pathway for medical students based at the UMass Chan-Lahey regional medical school campus in Burlington. Developed in partnership with Lahey, the track's name stands for lead, empower, advocate, and deliver, reflecting its focus on preparing students to improve the health and well-being of the communities they serve.
LEAD@Lahey students will follow the core of the T.H. Chan School of Medicine's Vista curriculum, with an added emphasis on leadership, health systems science, and interprofessional care. As part of Beth Israel Lahey Health (BILH), Lahey is one of the few physician-led hospitals in the country, giving students a setting to study medicine while developing their own values-based approach to leadership.
During the first 18 months of training, students will spend most Wednesdays at Lahey and in surrounding northeastern Massachusetts communities, participating in early clinical learning. In the fourth year, students will take part in intensive experiential rotations with Lahey and community-based health care executives across greater Boston, applying what they have learned to real leadership challenges.
Over four years, students will work with a faculty mentor and learning community to apply their leadership skills to real-world health care challenges, culminating in an action project. Students will partner with community and business leaders, along with Lahey and BILH health care executives, to address issues of access, equity, and social determinants of health in the region's diverse communities. Using a data-driven, change-management approach, students will develop solutions aimed at improving health for underserved populations while building an understanding of the physician's role as patient advocate.
"I deeply value the LEAD@Lahey program for its emphasis on values-driven leadership, which is woven through our comprehensive training as leaders of self, others, systems and community," said Robert Minh Lu Williams, a LEAD@Lahey student. "The track culminates in an 'action project,' allowing us to apply our leadership skills to tackle real health care challenges in the Burlington and neighboring communities."
LEAD@Lahey students will be members of Walden House, a close-knit learning community that connects classmates with peer mentors, faculty, and educators from their first weeks of medical school. Core clerkships will take place at Lahey in Burlington and across BILH's primary care, behavioral health, and community hospital network in northeastern Massachusetts, supervised by Lahey faculty and clerkship site directors.
The track is structured around four domains of values-driven leadership: leader of self, leader of others, leader of communities, and leader of systems, guiding students from personal leadership development through to organizational and systems-level change. As the program begins, Lahey and UMass Chan-Lahey aim to shape a new generation of physicians equipped to lead change across health care.
