Educating for the public's health: Clinical prevention and population health in pharmacy education

The Institute of Medicine has been one of numerous bodies to recommend that health care professionals receive education in public health to be more effective participants in the public health system. Since 2002, representatives from eight health professions education associations have met as the Healthy People Curriculum Task Force to help improve public health education in their respective curricula. The Task Force specifically addressed Healthy People 2010's objective 1.7 “Increase the proportion of schools of medicine, schools of nursing and health professional training schools whose basic curriculum for health care providers includes the core competencies in health promotion and disease prevention.” They developed the Clinical Prevention and Population Health Curriculum Framework in 2004 (revised in 2009). This framework of subjects that are relevant across clinical professions has been implemented differently within the various professions.

The American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy Educational Outcomes document, used to guide curriculum development, was revised in 2004 to include public health as one of the three major outcome areas (pharmaceutical care, systems management, and public health). Related language was subsequently integrated into the accreditation standards for pharmacy degree programs. An AACP Task Force expanded the Clinical Prevention and Population Health Curriculum Framework in 2006 to include educational outcomes and resources available to facilitate integration of the content into the curriculum. Dr. Meyer will provide an overview of the national curriculum documents that reflect the work of the Task Force and will describe how public health content is integrated into the curriculum at her institution.