The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA

Abstract #49026

Jonathan B. Weisbuch, MD, MPH, Public Health Director, Maricopa County Public Health Department, 1845 East Roosevelt St., Phoenix, AZ 85006, James Allen, MD, MPH, Maricopa County Department of Public Health, American Association of Public Health Physicians, 1845 E. Roosevelt Street, Phoenix, AZ 85006, 602-506-6601, jbweisbuch@earthlink.net, and Hugh Fulmer, MD, MPH, Center for Community Responsive Care, 11 Kent St., Brookline, MA 02445.

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 Maricopa County, Arizona. 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 American Association of Public Health Physicians’ sponsored 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, and put the public back into public health. Focusing on a whole community incorporating diversity, and based on a reasonable core of shared values among an array of ethnic groups in Maricopa County, the LHD training program’s community-professional partnership includes the components of the health care system serving the communities within Maricopa County. Through the teaching LHD as coordinator, community hospitals, community health centers, schools of medicine and osteopathy, public health, nursing and pharmacy are coming together in coalition to bring medicine, public health, and the community together.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe how a standard county health department can be turned into a teaching environment for multi-disciplinary health professionals.
• Discuss implementation of the medicine-public health initiative's goals through the creation of a teaching health department in partnership with the community and academia.
• Illustrate the meaning of the three-legged stool,(academia, public health, community).
• How the CCRC Preventive Medicine Residency/Fellowship training program at a teaching health department focuses on the substance of public health.

Keywords: Community-Oriented Primary Care, Public Health Infrastructure

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: Center for Community Response Care, the American Association of Public Health Physicians, the Maricopa County Department of Public Health and a consortium of insitutions including the University of Arizona School of Public Health and the communities of Ma
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.