Overview of Biostatistics teaching to under graduate medical students in family adoption program in a tertiary care hospital in Pondicherry

Article Type:  Editorial

Year: 2026; Volume: 6; Issue: 1; Page No: 5–6

Authors:  Senthilvel Vasudevan

https://doi.org/10.55349/ijmsnr.20266156

Affiliations:

Deputy Editor-In-Chief, International Journal of Medical Sciences and Nursing Research (IJMSNR), Coimbatore, Tamilnadu, India and Assistant Professor in Statistics (Biostatistics), Department of Community Medicine, Sri Venkateshwaraa Medical College Hospital & Research Centre, Ariyur, Pondicherry, India.  Email ID:  drvsenthilvel@svmchrc.ac.in   and   senthilvel99@gmail.com

Corresponding Author:

Dr. Senthilvel Vasudevan, Ph.D,

Assistant Professor in Statistics (Biostatistics),

Department of Community Medicine,

Sri Venkateshwaraa Medical College Hospital & Research Centre,

Ariyur, Pondicherry – 605 102.  India.

Email ID: senthilvel99@gmail.com

ORCID:  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7175-3534

Article Summary:  Submitted: 14-January-2026; Revised: 24-February-2026; Accepted: 12-March-2026; Published: 31-March-2026

Full Text

Introduction

India is villages based country with more than 50% of the population residing in a rural area. Government of India is implementing various health programmes and facilities in the rural areas. Despite various efforts the access to health care is deficient majority of the population. [1] Due to lack of awareness, utilizing the availability and accessibility to healthcare facilities and services which are available in this present situation, increased indirect out of pocket expenses, shortage of skilled workers, and lack of infrastructure which will affect the delivery of quality of health care services in the rural settings. [2] National Medical commission (NMC) has introduced the Family Adoption Program (FAP) in the undergraduate curriculum to provide a learning opportunity towards community-based health care for Indian medical graduates. [3–5] The NMC has initiated the FAP in an attempt to produce medical graduates with a community health perspective, thereby ensuring that the services of medical professionals are accessible to all citizens. This would in turn facilitate the achievement of the national health goals. [5] The FAP is a part of the curriculum of the Community Medicine subject and begins in the first professional year and remains throughout the course of the study. It aims to provide an experiential learning opportunity to Indian medical graduates towards community-based health care and thereby enhance equity in health. This FAP is giving an opportunity to these young students to improve their Biostatistical applications, learn to how to collect the data from the field, how to enter in Microsoft Excel, how to analyse the collected data, understand rural dynamics, identify various diseases, and come up with ways to improve the standards of rural families. [6] The present editorial article was exploring the family adoption program for the first year undergraduate medical students in a tertiary care hospital in Pondicherry.

Collecting the data from the field: [7] The first under graduate medical students were trained by the faculty of the Department of Community Medicine in various ways “How to collect the data in community area politely and with proper respect?”  The collect the collect should be entered via Google Form.  This Google Form was checked by the students via entered the data from their own family members’ data.  Any doubt raised by the students that will have to be rectified or clarified by the faculty.

Each student has to cover 3 to 4 houses and collect the health related data from all the households’ members in the respective houses without any missing data. That was checked by the interns with a supervising by Assistant Professor in Statistics or by a community medicine teaching faculty. This method of data collection was a similar method of the program of “ROME Posting”. [8]  This FAP is like ROME (Re-Oriented Of Medical Education) posting which was implemented to the 7^th semester under graduate medical students before implementing FAP in medical curriculum. [9]

Analysis of collected data: Collected data was compiled from all the students and made a master excel sheet (raw data) and then that data was analysed with the statistical software SPSS 23.0 version by Assistant Professor in Statistics (Biostatistics). Explained all the analysis of results related to FAP to the students in a deep way to understand about the health status of community. [9] Moreover, explained about statistical tables, diagrams, and how to write the results from the analysis of results. All medical students shall need the knowledge of research methodology and application of biostatistics tools via medical education. [10 – 11]

Conclusion

From this article, I have concluded that the FAP is very much important and essential activity to the first year medical students. Then only they will have to understand about the rural or urban community, their status,  and their health conditions.  Furthermore, the medical students were gain the keep knowledge about the research methodology and applications of biostatistics in the medical field.

Conflict of Interest – None

Source of funding – Nothing to declared by the author

Authors’ Contributions:  SV: Wrote the article and checked the author.  SV:  Senthilvel Vasudevan

References

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