Public health educational intervention in a family medicine residency.

Emerging infections and bioterrorism pose increasing threats to the health of our communities. To protect patients, frontline providers like family physicians must learn and use core public health skills such as disease detection, surveillance, and response activities. This paper describes a unique approach to teaching these core public health skills by incorporating residents into ongoing disease surveillance and reporting activities in coordination with the local health department.

Osteoporosis: point-of-care testing.

Objective: To review the literature concerning the utility of point-of-care (POC) testing devices for the diagnosis and management of osteoporosis.

Data Sources: Articles were identified from a MEDLINE search (1993-June 2003). Additional references were obtained from cross-referencing the bibliographies of selected articles.

A study of closure of family practice residency programs.

Background: Between July 1, 2000, and July 1, 2002, the Residency Review Committee for Family Practice had received requests for voluntary withdrawal from 27 residency programs. This number represents a significant increase in the rate of program closure over previous years.

Objectives: We compared descriptive data on these closing programs and explored factors contributing to the closure.