With community-based health care a central part of its curriculum, Florida International University's medical school turned an RV into a mobile health clinic so that students could treat families in neighborhoods where medical care is scare.

With community-based health care a central part of its curriculum, Florida International University's medical school turned an RV into a mobile health clinic so that students could treat families in neighborhoods where medical care is scare.

If it's a Monday, you can usually find Dr. David Brown parked next to a lake in Miami, spending the day inside a 36-foot-long RV. He's not on vacation.

Brown is chief of family medicine at Florida International University's medical school. The RV is the school's mobile health clinic.

Every Monday it's parked at the Royal Country Mobile Home Park in northwest Miami-Dade County. "It's a beautiful place right here," he says. "But this is not a wealthy community."

Brown helps direct FIU's Neighborhood HELP program. It's part of the school's curriculum that connects medical students with families in neighborhoods where medical care is scarce.

Students visit families in their homes where they conduct examinations and provide basic care. But some things are better done in a clinic. So the medical school bought its own RV. "We're able to bring free basic primary care to our households relatively close to their community," Brown says.

In one of the RV's exam rooms, third-year medical student Veronica Alvarez met recently with patient Maritza Flores. Flores has diabetes and high blood pressure. With help from the school's faculty, Alvarez has been treating her since January.

Flores says with Alvarez's encouragement, she's begun exercising more and has improved her diet. And, thanks to FIU's doctors, she's begun taking medication for her diabetes and high blood pressure. In just a few months, Alvarez says, she's seen a big improvement. "The high blood pressure and the diabetes together is what you worry about," Alvarez says. "And now, her diabetes is well-controlled and her hypertension is well-controlled as well."

Over the last decade, a pressing need for new doctors has led many universities to open medical schools. Seventeen new schools have been accredited since 2005, and several are looking at new ways to train doctors.

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How A Florida Medical School Cares For Communities In Need