Orthopedic surgery in Palau-Current capacity, needs, and future directions.

Background: Palau, an island nation in Micronesia, is a medically underserved area with a shortage of specialty care services. Orthopedic diagnoses in Palau remain among the three most common reasons for costly off-island medical referral. The purpose of this study was to assess Palau's current orthopedic surgery capacity and needs to inform interventions to build capacity to improve care access and quality.

The use of appropriateness criteria for the selection of clinical preventive services for a Pacific island health service.

Clinical preventive services are measures performed in the clinic setting for the prevention of disease and the promotion of health. The general practice/public health physician residency class of the Palau Area Health Education Center reviewed existing clinical preventive services protocols for the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Palau and revised them, taking four criteria into consideration for each candidate intervention (local patterns of disease and risk factors, evidence for effectiveness of the intervention, local system capability for delivery of the intervention and its consequences, and competing priorities). The resulting package of interventions is much more focused and appropriate to local conditions than was the one that it replaced.

The Palau AHEC--academizing the public health work plan: capacity development and innovation in Micronesia.

The Palau Area Health Education Center (AHEC)--a program of the University of Hawaii's John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM) and based at Palau Community College--was established in 2001 in response to the recommendations of the 1998 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report--Pacific Partnerships for Health--Charting a New Course for the 21st Century1. One of IOM's core recommendations was to promote the training of the primary health care workforce among the U.

The Pacific Center for Emergency Health--an anatomy of collaborative development and change--the Palau perspective.

Many Pacific Islands Countries (PICs) by their geographic location, isolation, and lack of resources, are at risk for both environmental and man-made disasters. Disaster management (DM) and mitigation is frustrated by the general underdevelopment of DM planning and lack of adequate emergency medical services (EMS) to deal with daily emergencies let alone large-scale emergencies and disasters. To address this, the U.

Community outreach, training, and research: the Hawai'i/Pacific Basin area Health Education Center of the University of Hawai'i, John A. Burns SChool of Medicine.

The Hawai'i/Pacific Basin AHEC is a federal grant program that utilizes academic/community partnerships to recruit students to health careers, train students in rural and underserved areas, and assist with workforce development across the region. Ongoing activities and programs include 1) Outreach for recruitment to health careers for students from kindergarten through adulthood; 2) Individual and interdisciplinary health professions student training in rural and underserved areas; 3) Community health education using distance learning; 4) Assessment of and efforts to improve recruitment and retention of providers in rural areas including continuing education; and 5) Health disparities research. The AHEC programs reach more than 4,000 individuals annually, helps to train more than 1,000 individuals a year and assist with placement of up to 20 providers a year in rural and underserved healthcare practices.

In-country and community-based postgraduate family practice training for Micronesian physicians--the Palau AHEC: a collaborative effort.

The U.S. Institute of Medicine in its 1998 review of the health care systems among the U.

The Pacific Center for Emergency Health: an anatomy of collaborative development and change--the Palau perspective.

Many Pacific Islands Countries (PICs) by their geographic location, isolation, and lack of resources, are at risk for both environmental and man-made disasters. Disaster management (DM) and mitigation is frustrated by the general underdevelopment of DM planning and lack of adequate emergency medical services (EMS) to deal with daily emergencies let alone large-scale emergencies and disasters. To address this, the U.