Florida International University Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine, founded in 2009, is a public medical school in Miami that was explicitly designed with a social mission to address physician shortages in South Florida's underserved communities. FIU Wertheim is notable for its StepUp Curriculum — a competency-based framework developed in collaboration with community health advocates that integrates social determinants of health, health disparities, and community partnership into every stage of training. Miami's extraordinarily diverse population provides unparalleled training in cross-cultural medicine.
What makes it different
FIU Wertheim's StepUp Curriculum is one of the most innovative and well-documented community-health-integrated medical curricula in the United States. Miami's demographics — the most ethnically diverse major city in the US, with large Cuban, Haitian, Colombian, Venezuelan, and Caribbean communities — provides extraordinary exposure to cross-cultural medicine and tropical disease. The school's explicit focus on social determinants of health is built into the curriculum rather than added as an elective.
Course & teaching
Integrated curriculum. 4-year MD. The StepUp Curriculum is an innovative competency-based framework that integrates social and community health content alongside clinical and biomedical science from Year 1. Students are assessed on competencies rather than only traditional academic metrics. Clinical rotations at Broward Health hospitals, Jackson Health System, and community health centers across Miami-Dade and Broward counties.
Research strengths
FIU Wertheim College of Medicine (MD) has notable research strength in Health disparities in Miami-Dade, HIV/AIDS, Tropical medicine, Diabetes in Hispanic populations, Community health research.
Interview
FIU Wertheim College of Medicine (MD) interviews via Traditional interview (faculty and/or student interviewers). FIU Wertheim uses a traditional interview format, typically consisting of two one-on-one sessions of approximately 30–45 minutes each with faculty and/or current students. Interviews are non-blind and probe motivation for medicine, commitment to primary care and underserved communities in the Miami metropolitan area, and understanding of the StepUp Curriculum. Interviewers specifically probe whether candidates have genuine community health commitment rather than merely academic medicine ambitions, reflecting FIU's explicit social mission. The interview day includes a campus tour at the FIU University Park campus and an information session.
Intake
Approximately 120 students per year.
At a glance
Founded in 2009, based in Miami, FL. Programmes offered: Community Medicine, Health Equity, Primary Care, Global Health, Social Determinants of Health.
