Feature Story
As published in the UConn Advance, May 21, 2009.
Health Center Faculty Honoree a Champion of Primary Care
By Chris DeFrancesco
Dr. Bruce Gould examines a seasonal worker at a tobacco farm in Enfield, providing care as a physician with the Mobile Free Migrant Farmworker Clinic.
Photo by Petra Clark-Dufner
The Health Center’s Board of Directors has named Dr. Bruce Gould the 2009 winner of its Faculty Recognition Award.
Gould, professor and associate dean for primary care at the UConn School of Medicine, has earned a reputation as an advocate for public health, primary care, and preventative medicine. He also serves as director of the Connecticut Area Health Education Center (AHEC) Program, medical director of Hartford’s Department of Health and Human Services, and medical director of the Burgdorf Health Center, a community clinic serving the underserved population in Hartford’s north end in collaboration with Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center.
A primary care general internist, Gould also is the founder of and adviser to the Mobile Free Migrant Farmworker Clinic, which has served Connecticut’s migrant farm workers since 1998.
“Dr. Gould has made a career of giving voice to the most vulnerable populations,” says Dr. Bruce Koeppen, dean for academic affairs at the School of Medicine.
“He’s passionate about the delivery of medical care to the underserved of today and tomorrow, through his efforts to encourage medical students to consider careers in primary care and public health and his efforts to introduce youth from disadvantaged communities to those professions.”
Gould helped establish the medical school’s Urban Service Track, a special mentorship program designed to produce doctors, dentists, nurses, and pharmacists committed to serving underserved populations in Connecticut’s cities, and the Youth Health Services Corps, a nationally recognized recruitment program that trains and places high school students as volunteers in health care agencies.
He also is involved in the development and delivery of UConn’s quality improvement and patient safety curriculum and its nutrition curriculum.
“The quality piece in medicine, the outcome piece, how we improve the quality of outcomes to people who put their trust in us, is not necessarily taught at medical schools across the country,” Gould says.
“It is taught at UConn, and doing so has improved the quality of doctor that we produce at the end of the process.”
Gould served on the National Advisory Council on Migrant Health for the Health Resources and Services Administration from 2000 to 2004, including a term as chairman in 2004. The American Medical Association honored him with its Pride in Profession Award in 2004.
The Board of Directors Faculty Recognition Award includes a $10,000 bonus. Recipients have their name and photo displayed on a permanent plaque at the Health Center.