Teaching Population Health

Abstract

A 2012 Institute of Medicine report is the latest in the growing number of calls to incorporate a population health approach in health professionals’ training. Over the last decade, Duke University, particularly its Department of Community and Family Medicine, has been heavily involved with community partners in Durham, North Carolina to improve the local community’s health. Based on these initiatives, a group of interprofessional faculty began tackling the need to fill the curriculum gap to train future health professionals in public health practice, community engagement, critical thinking, and team skills to improve population health effectively in Durham and elsewhere. The Department of Community and Family Medicine has spent years in care delivery redesign and curriculum experimentation, design, and evaluation to distinguish the skills trainees and faculty need for population health improvement and to integrate them into educational programs. These clinical and educational experiences have led to a set of competencies that form an organizational framework for curricular planning and training. This framework delineates which learning objectives are appropriate and necessary for each learning level, from novice through expert, across multiple disciplines and domains. The resulting competency map has guided Duke’s efforts to develop, implement, and assess training in population health for learners and faculty. In this article, the authors describe the competency map development process as well as examples of its application and evaluation at Duke and limitations to its use with the hope that other institutions will apply it in different settings.

Community Health, Advocacy, and Managing Populations (CHAMP) Longitudinal Residency Education and Evaluation

“…Some learners reported that the CHAMP curriculum "could" increase recruitment of high-quality candidates, while others felt that this curriculum would not differentiate our program as all family medicine residencies would have a rigorous community health and advocacy education experience. This discrepancy in perception affirms what Kaprielian et al found in developing their population health competency map 16 and suggests that clearly outlining the longitudinal and progressive CHAMP curricular components will increase understanding of CHAMP's scope, foundation, and strategic priority within the residency (in alignment with program pillars of advocacy and caring for underserved populations) and ease communication with learners.…”

“…CHAMP is a unique longitudinal curriculum for family medicine residents designed to integrate tools and skill building in community health, population health and management, advocacy, and health disparities into clinical practice. Drawing on selected elements from published programs, 13, [16][17][18][19] CHAMP longitudinal curriculum incorporates community partnerships, population analysis, and specialty clinical experiences to teach residents to identify and address SDH and health disparities in our community and clinics. CHAMP emphasizes identification of SDH and their downstream effects on health, and teaches residents to engage community members, leverage population health data, and build and lead interdisciplinary teams to address health disparities consistent with ACGME Family Medicine community and public health milestones.…”

Public health education and health system needs in Pakistan: a mixed methods study

“…Current recommendations insist on following a competency-based approach starting with "backward planning" that first specifies local health issues. Once the most pertinent problems are identified, desired competencies and well defined learning outcomes are developed and integrated into the curriculum to address those predetermined community needs (20)(21)(22)(23). The authors therefore recommend that public health academic programmes in Pakistan be restructured to achieve greater alignment with evolving community and health system needs.…”

Engaging with ePortfolios: Teaching Social Work Competencies through a Program-wide Curriculum

“…The acquisition and demonstration of competencies based on professional standards are particularly well-suited to human service professions, including education, nursing and social work (Hagenhauer & Volet, 2014). Competency statements have been developed to clearly describe what students should be able to do and professional programs have been designed around these (Kaprielian et al, 2013;Thompson, Harver, & Eure, 2009). Salm, Johner, and Luhanga (2016) assert that developing required competencies related to specific standards help to determine whether students had the technical and professional skills and were professionally competent for their chosen profession.…”