American journal of preventive medicine
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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.
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In an era of substantial reform to the nation's health system, there has never been a greater need for physicians to understand public health. One way to foster public health in medical education is to utilize the resources within General Preventive Medicine and Public Health (PM) residency programs. Trained in public health and clinical medicine, PM physicians are uniquely positioned to bridge these disciplines. ⋯ These results suggest that PM residency programs are an underutilized resource in fostering public health in medical education, especially on engagement at the level of graduate medical education. Strategies to improve engagement should consider the nine criteria outlined in this study, as well as common barriers.
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The dramatic increase in pediatric obesity has renewed interest in accurate methods and screening indexes for identifying at-risk children and youth. Whether age-specific standards are needed is a factor that remains uncertain. ⋯ The results demonstrate a strong relationship between chronic disease risk factors and percent fat in children and youth that varies by age in boys and girls.
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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 the public health, prevention, population health, and policy (P4) curriculum at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, Phoenix (UACOM-P), would be of value to medical educators.
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Few studies have identified health-related criterion standards of percent body fat (%BF) in U.S. youth. Further, existing standards are static thresholds (e.g., 25%, 30%) and do not account for normal growth and maturation. ⋯ Age- and gender-specific %BF thresholds for creating separate risk groups were identified in relation to metabolic syndrome status. The selected thresholds identify adolescents with unfavorable metabolic profiles. These values could be extrapolated to younger children using previously created %BF centiles, which potentially allows for earlier identification and intervention of at-risk youth if tracking of current %BF was maintained.