Core Curriculum for Health Professions

The goal of this project is the development, implementation and evaluation of a core curriculum for the health professions. It is the next in a series of steps that began in 2003 when the School of Public Health at the University of Buffalo merged with the School of Allied Health Professions to create a new School of Public Health and Health Professions.

The merger led to greater collaboration among health related schools and programs at the university, and to a second step, the creation of a multidisciplinary core curriculum committee. With support from a private benefactor, that committee identified three areas of focus for the proposed core curriculum:

• Professionalism/communications looking at issues such as professionalism, structure and roles of health care teams, ethics, teaching and communicating with target groups, serving underserved populations and cultural competency;
• Evidence-based practice dealing with introductory statistics, assessing literature, assessing scientific/professional literature, and using literature, experience and patient preferences to inform clinical decisions; and
• Population health and wellness to include topics such as health promotion, health systems and policy, community aspects of practice, disability models and approaches, fundamentals of disability epidemiology, key disability legislation, government services and programs, multicultural views of disabilities, concepts of health and health promotion for people with disabilities and public health as a change agent for disabilities.

Support from the Macy Foundation, together with continuing support from the private benefactor, will be used to complete development and to evaluate the core curriculum. This project has the strong support of the Association of Schools of Allied Health Professions and other professional societies.