Population Health in the Medical School Curriculum: a Look Across the Country
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Population Health in the Medical School Curriculum: a Look Across the Country Ryan Morse 1
&
Abigail Smith 2 & Sharon Fitzgerald-Wolff 3 & Ky Stoltzfus 1
Accepted: 21 September 2020 # International Association of Medical Science Educators 2020
Abstract Introduction Population health (PH) is an important component of medical school education and is required for physicians to practice effectively. Identifying the number of medical schools teaching population health and the individual curricular components could lead to a better understanding of the current status of population health implementation into medical education. Materials and Methods Between February and March 2019, medical schools in the USA were surveyed about the structure and content of their population health curriculum. Differences were analyzed by school funding and class size. Results Respondents were gathered from 28 (68%) public and 13 (32%) private schools; 27 (66%) schools having fewer than 150 students and 14 (34%) having greater than or equal to 150. Thirty-two schools (78%) had a structured PH curriculum. Seven (22%) only had a dedicated preclinical module and 33 (83%) had a longitudinal curriculum throughout multiple years of school. Many programs utilized flipped classroom models (n = 19, 46%); however, only 8 (20%) utilized standardized patients. Health disparities (100%), community health initiatives (88%), and preventative health guidelines (88%) are among the most commonly taught subjects. Quality improvement was taught by 34 of 41 programs (83%), but only sixteen (39%) schools required students to complete a quality improvement project. Discussion Differences in population health curricula were found between school size and funding. As evidenced by this study, most medical schools recognize the importance of population health by including it in their curriculum and a majority are incorporating the subject longitudinally into multiple years of school. Keywords Population health . Longitudinal curriculum . Medical education . Quality improvement . Medical school integration
Introduction Population health (PH) contains critically important concepts for physicians to learn, as the field of medicine faces complex challenges at the national and community-based level. Encompassing a wide variety of topics, population health includes biostatistics and epidemiology, health disparities, private and public health insurance, preventative health guidelines, medical coding and
* Ryan Morse [email protected] 1
Department of Internal Medicine, University of Kansas School of Medicine, Kansas City, KS, USA
2
Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, UC Davis School of Medicine, Sacramento, CA, USA
3
Department of Population Health, University of Kansas School of Medicine, Kansas City, KS, USA
billing, patient safety, quality improvement (QI), and medical malpractice. Proficiency in these subjects allows physicians to effectively communicate and treat patients. On a larger scale, physicians can influence patie
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