American journal of preventive medicine
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Evidence, mainly from cross-sectional studies, suggests that physical activity is a potentially important modifiable factor associated with physical performance and strength in older age. It is unclear whether the benefits of physical activity accumulate across life or whether there are sensitive periods when physical activity is more influential. ⋯ There are cumulative benefits of physical activity across adulthood on physical performance in midlife. Increased activity should be promoted early in adulthood to ensure the maintenance of physical performance in later life.
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Faith-based organizations can be strategic partners in addressing the needs of low-income and underserved individuals and communities. The Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) Public Health/Preventive Medicine Residency Program (PH/PMR) collaborates with faith-based organizations for the purpose of resident education, community engagement, and service. These partners provide guidance for the program's community initiatives and health promotion activities designed to address health inequities. ⋯ The MSM PH/PMR Program has engaged in faith-based partnerships for 7 years. This article discusses the structure of these partnerships, how partners are identified, funding sources for supporting resident projects, and examples of resident health needs assessment and intervention activities. The MSM PH/PMR Program may serve as a model to other residency and fellowship programs that may have an interest in developing partnerships with faith-based organizations.
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Public health situations faced by family physicians and other primary care practitioners, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and more recently H1N1, have resulted in an increased interest to identify the public health competencies relevant to family medicine. At present there is no agreed-on set of public health competencies delineating the knowledge and skills that family physicians should possess to effectively face diverse public health challenges. ⋯ These competencies will also be used to guide the development of a family medicine-public health primer and faculty development sessions to support family medicine faculty facilitating residents to achieve these competencies. Once more fully implemented, an evaluation will be initiated to determine the degree to which these public health competencies are being achieved by family medicine graduates, especially whether they attained the knowledge, skills, and confidence necessary to effectively face diverse public health situations-from common to emergent.
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This is one of six short papers that describe additional innovations to help integrate public health into medical education; these were featured in the "Patients and Populations: Public Health in Medical Education" conference. They represent relatively new endeavors or curricular components that had not been explored in prior publications. Although evaluation data are lacking, it was felt that sharing a description of a longitudinal curriculum focused on the development of basic advocacy skills through practical activities in community assessment and engagement combined with legislative advocacy at the University of New Mexico would be of value to medical educators.
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Integrating public health into medical curricula poses a substantial challenge to educators. However, the needs of trainees and the population requirements of accrediting bodies provide a compelling call to action to improve how tomorrow's medical practitioners are prepared to incorporate public health into their practices. This article provides insights about the nature of the challenges, and it identifies opportunities and practical approaches to integrating public health content into medical school curricula. The paper incorporates authors' opinions with a synthesis of the discussions from a workshop at the 2010 "Patients and Populations: Public Health in Medical Education" conference.