Institute for Interprofessional Prevention Education

Interprofessional prevention education (IPE) efforts that emphasize the importance of health professionals working and training together as part of collaborative, interprofessional teams is increasingly recognized as a means to achieve our nation's goals for health improvement. However, few health professions students have the opportunity to learn as part of an interprofessional team. Fewer still have opportunities to focus on prevention. Providing opportunities to encourage these efforts at academic institutions is a priority for the Association for Prevention Teaching and Research (APTR) which, along with the Healthy People Curriculum Task Force, has collaborated on educational efforts with representatives from several health professions, including nursing, dentistry, medicine, pharmacy, and physician assistants.

APTR and the Task Force offered two Institutes for Interprofessional Prevention Education in September 2007 and 2008. Participants had an opportunity to learn from experts who had successfully implemented interprofessional education programs on their campuses as well as with faculty colleagues from other academic institutions. Both Institutes were designed to help members of academic health center faculties develop and implement curricula focused on interprofessional prevention education using service-learning.

Twenty-eight (28) interprofessional teams were selected via a competitive objective review process from among proposals submitted in response to an RFA. Criteria for the post-Institute projects included both a curricular component and a community-based, service-learning component. An evaluation of the Institute showed this to be an effective way to advance interprofessional prevention education and to develop curricula that would be successful in meeting the goal of advancing interprofessional prevention education and practice.