Strengthening Health Systems through Interprofessional Education - (CHANGE, presenting author)

BACKGROUND: The public health workforce is undergoing radical changes because of the advancements in technology and policy changes supporting electronic exchange of information between public health and health care providers (e.g., meaningful use [MU]). Consequently, a need exists for developing the public health informatics workforce to both update and develop robust information systems to capture, manage, and analyze information to support public health and health care policy and practice with the goal of improving population health. Beyond academic institutions, a need exists to provide applied public health informatics and health systems training at state and local health departments to address the informatics workforce gap. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, along with national partner organizations, developed a multipronged innovative strategy to address workforce needs for training on public health informatics, health systems integration and interdisciplinary practice.

METHODS: Strengthening health systems requires both public health informaticians and epidemiologists to develop and provide integrated solutions to address today’s challenges. The project, “Strengthening Health Systems through Inter-professional Education” (Project SHINE) is a 3-year cooperative agreement with national partner organizations aimed at improving public health and health care collaborations through 3 fellowship programs.   The diversity within and between each fellowship provides opportunities for interdisciplinary peer-to-peer learning; this applied approach allows fellows to learn and partner with each other while implementing host site projects. Fellows in these programs receive interdisciplinary practice, health systems and informatics applied training and work collaboratively on their host site projects. Examples of host site projects include novel uses of biosurveillance and health information exchange projects.

RESULTS: The first year (planning phase) has been completed, and our first cohort was recruited in August 2014. The historical pathway and rationale for developing and implementing Project SHINE will be explained during the presentation. Lessons learned include leveraging national partner organizations to integrate IPE principles, aligning the curriculum to fellows projects, and facilitating peer-to-peer learning opportunities.

CONCLUSIONS: CDC launched Project SHINE as an innovation to change the manner in which we train the future public health informatics and applied epidemiology workforce through interdisciplinary approaches. It involves the development of integrated, applied fellowships to address public health challenges requires diverse and strong partnerships. This novel IPE training approach models integrated medicine, and potentially develops new pathways for collaboration between public health and health care.