The Medicine/Public Health Initiative articulates seven goals. The seventh goal, "translate initiative ideas into action", has inspired the creation of a "teaching" local health department (LHD) in the city of Lowell, MA. Analogous to a teaching hospital, the Health Department's strategic plan includes seeking to be designated as a recipient of GME funding to support the Center for Community Responsive Care's COPC multi-disciplinary fellowship program. This Preventive Medicine Residency/Fellowship and an integrated undergraduate PM clerkship program are based at the Health Department and apply the steps of COPC (see http://www.apha.org/media/CommBPrevProg.htm) to work within the community. Focusing on a whole community incorporating diversity, and based on a reasonable core of shared values among an array of ethnic groups in Lowell, the LHD training program's community-professional partnership includes the components of the health care system serving the community of Lowell. Through the teaching LHD as coordinator, two hospitals and a community health center, a school of medicine, and the University of Massachusetts Lowell are coming together in coalition to bring medicine, public health, and the community together. See www.apha.org/media/CommBPrevProg.htm
Learning Objectives: Session participants will 1) Participate in a role-playing exercise of a community health meeting 2) Analyze how each of the institutional stakeholders in the health of a community can contribute to effecting the essential public health services 3) Understand how diverse community groups can and must be brought together in coalition to apply "denominator medicine" to identified community health problems
Keywords: Community-Oriented Primary Care, Public Health Education
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.