 | The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
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| The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
Patty Porter, RN, MPH, CHES, Integrating Medicine and Public Health (IMAP) Program, University of California, San Francisco, 3333 California Street, Suite 340, San Francisco, CA 94118, 415 502-6493, pporter@itsa.ucsf.edu, Leslie K. Ross, PhD, Institute for Health & Aging, University of California at San Francisco, Box 0646, San Francisco, CA 94143-0646, Ronald W. Chapman, MD, MPH, Medicine and Public Health Section, California Department of Health Services, P.O. Box 942732, Mailstop 253, Sacramento, CA 94234-7320, Neal Kohatsu, MD, MPH, Medical Board of California, 1426 Howe Avenue, Suite 54, Sacramento, CA 95825-3236, and Patrick J. Fox, PhD, Institute for Health and Aging, University Of California, San Francisco, 3333 California Street Suite 340, San Francisco, CA 94118.
The National Medicine and Public Health Initiative developed an agenda of action to engage the public health and medicine sectors in reshaping health education, research and practice. Although much has been written about effective collaboration in public health, evidence has often been anecdotal. In particular, there have been few studies that have examined factors specifically associated with successful collaborative efforts between the medicine and public health sectors. We conducted a survey of 329 medicine and public health partnerships in California to determine salient factors in predicting partnerships' success in achieving four outcomes: 1) improvement in access to healthcare services; 2) improvement in health-related knowledge, attitude, and/or behaviors; 3) improvement in a health-related outcome; and 4) a reduction in health disparities. Partnership formation; partner recruitment; barriers to collaboration; and leadership/governance variables were not predictive of partnership success. Partnership duration was significant in predicting success in achieving outcomes. Anectotal factors identified in the partnership literature were found not to be as salient as believed in insuring the success of medicine and public health partnerships. The longer a partnership can remain intact (i.e., minimally longer than one year), irrespective of the particularities of its formation and structure, the greater the probability that the partnership will achieve its desired outcomes. This paper provides a baseline for future research and discussion to capture the ingredients that lead to successful collaborations.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Partnerships, Outcomes Research
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
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.