Chiropractic education and the CCE wellness comptencies: Using HP2010 to shape the next generation of chiropractors

As of February, 2007, chiropractic education must show formal inclusion of the new Council on Chiropractic Education (CCE) wellness competencies. The competencies propose that the chiropractic education include screening for disease risk, prevention and health promotion, and wellness principles incorporated into patient care. This presentation will describe key foci of the CCE wellness competencies, describe how Healthy People 2010 (HP2010) has been used to develop and implement these competencies, and offer examples of putting HP 2010 into practice in the chiropractic educational and clinical settings.

This project utilized the results of a 2004 and 2005 assessment of chiropractic clinical faculty on wellness, health promotion and prevention. This survey unearthed the HP2010 focus areas faculty deemed as most important and practical to implement into the chiropractic educational and clinical settings, and was used to focus educational change.

The five focus areas identified by faculty were: Physical activity, tobacco-use cessation, nutrition, overweight/obesity and injury prevention.

For each of these topics, a list of local and national resources was developed for use by clinicians to assist with wellness-based clinical care. Examples of classroom and clinical materials and changes to one chiropractic college's curriculum, using HP2010 will be shared. The challenges of implementing curricular and clinical changes at one institution will be described, along with suggestions for more long-term educational goals to assist a profession towards comfortably adapting the wellness focus it was truly born to embrace.