Who, What, and Where: Transforming Primary Care Education to Advance Health Equity

To transform primary care with the goal of achieving health equity, changes in the way the health care workforce is selected, trained, and ultimately delivers care should be expedited. Research has repeatedly shown the immense impact of the social determinants of health and the gaps related to health equity in the United States. Despite this knowledge, health care education and delivery systems have been slow to evolve. The Health Resources and Services Administration established the Academic Units for Primary Care Training and Enhancement to work towards strengthening the primary care workforce. Through their research, the six individual Academic Units (AU) have identified gaps related to health equity in their areas of focus. This article provides recommendations from the AUs on ways primary care health professions education can be transformed to advance health equity and serves as background for the articles to follow in the remainder of the supplement.

Microresearch: Promoting Scholarly Activity That Addresses Health Disparities in Rural Health Professional Education Programs

Microresearch is an innovative, mentored research experience, originally developed in Africa and adapted for U.S. health professional trainees preparing for rural primary care practice. This report describes program elements (funding, mentorship, and peer support) that others may replicate to develop research and leadership skills through community engagement to address health disparities.

Leveraging Collective Impact to Promote Health Equity

The purpose of this paper is to describe how the Academic Units for Primary Care Training and Enhancement (AU-PCTE) used the Collective Impact Model to promote health equity. The Collective Impact Model and its five conditions provided a framework for the Academic Units for Primary Care Training and Enhancement (AU-PCTE), representing multiple universities in the United States, to promote health equity. Through the establishment of shared measurement, continuous communication, mutually reinforcing activities, and the guidance of the backbone support organization, the work of each AU contributed to the collective impact on health equity. It is important to underscore that collective impact is an iterative process with both challenges and successes.

A Framework for Transforming Primary Care Health Care Professions Education and Training to Promote Health Equity

A diverse and well-trained, distributed and resourced primary care workforce is essential for advancing health equity. However, few standardized models exist to guide health care professions education (HCPE) on core competencies regarding understanding and effectively addressing social determinants of health, social injustice, structural barriers, and the high burden of health needs in marginalized populations. We […]

An Organic Approach to Health Professions Education and Health Equity: Learning in and With Underserved Communities

Since the Flexner Report in 1910, medical education has taken a primarily technical approach to preparing students for science-based medical practice. Adequately addressing the complex problems leading to population health disparities and achieving health equity is not possible through a technical approach to education alone. Inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright, who brought organic architecture to […]

Targeted Rural Health Education

This webinar examines the Targeted Rural Health Education (TRHE) project, which provides health profession students with the opportunity to gain experience writing plain language health education stories based on topics from the community needs assessments or a clinical experience for publication in a rural newspaper.