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From Primary Care to Public Health: Using Problem-Based Learning and the Ecological Model to Teach Public Health to First Year Medical Students

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Abstract

We investigated whether a public health-oriented Problem-Based Learning case presented to first-year medical students conveyed 12 “Population Health Competencies for Medical Students,” as recommended by the Association of American Medical Colleges and the Regional Medicine-Public Health Education Centers. A public health-oriented Problem-Based Learning case guided by the ecological model paradigm was developed and implemented among two groups of 8 students at the University of California, Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program, in the Fall of 2010. Using directed content analysis, student-generated written reports were coded for the presence of the 12 population health content areas. Students generated a total of 29 reports, of which 20 (69%) contained information relevant to at least one of the 12 population health competencies. Each of the 12 content areas was addressed by at least one report. As physicians-in-training prepare to confront the challenges of integrating prevention and population health with clinical practice, Problem-Based Learning is a promising tool to enhance medical students’ engagement with public health.

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Conflict of interest

Authors have no financial conflicts of interest and received no financial support for this research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of California, Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program, 570 University Hall #1190, Berkeley, 94720, USA

    Cora R. Hoover & Amin Azzam

  2. University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Candice C. Wong

Authors
  1. Cora R. Hoover
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  2. Candice C. Wong
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  3. Amin Azzam
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Amin Azzam.

Additional information

We have no prior publications related to this work, although we did present key findings in a workshop at the AAMC Western Group on Educational Affairs (WGEA) Conference in May 2011.

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Hoover, C.R., Wong, C.C. & Azzam, A. From Primary Care to Public Health: Using Problem-Based Learning and the Ecological Model to Teach Public Health to First Year Medical Students. J Community Health 37, 647–652 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10900-011-9495-y

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