Faculty Bibliography

Student-run free clinics (SRFCs) act as primary care providers that bring health care to populations in need and are an important source of undergraduate medical education (UME), guiding trainees through the art of history taking and physical examination. However, they are also social justice and advocacy initiatives-addressing disparity in access to care and educating medical trainees with firsthand exposure to socioeconomic determinants of health and language and medical illiteracy barriers. The authors present an examination of the impact of SRFCs, supported by academic literature, in their 3 roles as medical care providers, as a component of medical education, and as advocacy organizations. Based on the evidence of that literature and decades of direct SRFC leadership experience, the authors make the case that SRFCs deserve a prominent role in the discussion of how UME institutions contribute to correcting health care disparities and to serving social justice reform.

Here we document a rare, acute, infection caused by non-toxigenic Corynebacterium diphtheriae and the resulting unique and severe clinical sequelae. Our patient was a young man with no known pre-existing conditions that presented in cardiopulmonary arrest. We contrast this case with prior instances of non-toxigenic C. diphtheriae strain infection in the United States and summarize the literature that suggests systemic infection can result in cardiogenic toxicity. We speculate on a possible missed, pre-existing condition that could have increased this patient's susceptibility to poor clinical outcome.