The mission of the Department of Community Medicine is to create a model for decentralized community health care delivery, to develop networking with other organizations, to initiate policy advocacy for health needs of the underprivileged section of the community, to conduct and promote research on priority health problems and to develop doctors with a service orientation towards underprivileged communities.

The Department strives to provide the best learning opportunity to medical students through its innovative community-based medical education. For each batch of medical students, the Institute adopts a village. In this village, each student adopts 3-4 families covering the entire village. Through these visits the students take care of the health care needs of their adopted families. Through the village adoption scheme, students learn about rural life, environmental sanitation, socio-economic conditions, and health problems of the community.