Department of Family Medicine

John Epling, MD, MSED, FAAFP
Chair, Department of
Family Medicine

Upstate's Department of Family Medicine is a group of professionals committed to the principles of family medicine and primary care. We honor those principles in our diverse, patient-centered clinical practices, through teaching a wide-range of learners and through answering the important questions in our discipline through structured inquiry and strong research.

Family Medicine Clinical Services

• The Family Medicine clinical practice at Madison-Irving Medical Center strives to embrace the concepts of the patient-centered medical home.
• The Central New York Occupational Health Clinical Center employs a comprehensive group of specialists to diagnose and treat work-related illness in the Central New York Region.

Academic Programs

Medical School Programs

• The Family Medicine Clerkship
  Consistently top-ranked in the medical school.


• The Rural Medical Scholars Program
  A comprehensive training program in rural medicine culminating in clerkship-year training in a rural community under experienced community-based faculty.


• Electives in Family Medicine
  The Department of Family Medicine runs a number of Electives available to Medical Students


• Family Medicine Student Organization (FMSO)
  The FMSO provides students with opportunities to learn about the diverse and rewarding field of Family Medicine.


• See Also: The Virtual Family Medicine Interest Group, an online forum run by the American Academy of Family Physicians

Affiliated Residency Programs

• St. Joseph's Hospital Family Medicine Residency in Syracuse, NY is one of the oldest and most respected in the country, offering top-flight education in a leading community hospital.
• UHS-Wilson Hospital Family Medicine in Binghamton, NY is the anchor of family medicine training in the Southern Tier of New York and has a dually-accredited MD/DO training program.
• St. Elizabeth Family Medicine Residency in Utica, NY serves a diverse underprivileged population in Utica and is also a dually-accredited MD/DO training program.

New York State Area Health Education Center System (NYSAHEC)

Area Health Education Centers (AHEC's) are non-profit agencies dedicated to healthcare workforce development. The New York State AHEC System is a health care workforce development initiative with effective strategies to cultivate a workforce that more closely matches the diversity of the state’s population and assure that each community has enough practitioners in the right categories (especially primary care).  New York State AHEC System strategies keep skills and talents in the state, contributing to the health of the economy while improving the health and well-being of all New Yorkers. Strategies involve connecting individuals and communities to the right opportunities and resources. Because each area is unique, regional AHECs collaborate closely with communities to address specific needs.

• The Department of Family Medicine is home to the Central Region Office of the NYSAHEC System
• Coordinates with two centers in the Central New York Region
  • See the Central New York AHEC for in-service and continuing education opportunities, as well as activities for K-12 students to learn about health careers
  • The Northern AHEC is active in a number of initiatives in the northern tier of NYS, and created www.myhealthcareer.org to explore health careers

Division of Research and Academic Development

The Division of Research and Academic Development specializes in primary care-based research, health disparities and ethics, mental health, disabilities, clinical prevention and educational research.

• Our practice-based research network, SALT-Net (the Studying, Acting, Learning and Teaching Network) is devoted to partnering with primary care practices in the region to ask the important questions about primary care and share the answers.
• The "Scholarly Pairings for Academic and Research Collaboration" (SPARC) program pairs graduate, public health, advanced undergraduate, and medical students with faculty at Upstate to design and implement research studies, evaluate educational programs, and produce scholarly presentations and manuscripts.
• A representative sample of publications by the faculty from the Department of Family Medicine may be found by viewing publications by past and present SUNY Upstate Family Medicine faculty

Our community-based faculty—in Syracuse, and the rest of the Central New York Region—volunteer their time to help us teach and research family medicine and are the unsung heroes of our department. In each of these divisions, you will find caring, compassionate and highly skilled professionals devoted to our missions and exemplifying the best in academic family medicine.