An examination of the growing US undergraduate public health movement.

Objectives: With over 10,900 public health bachelor's degree graduates conferred in 2015, public health undergraduate education in the USA has become mainstream. However, with the recent establishment of a majority of the programs, the impact of the undergraduate programs remains largely unknown. This study examines a sample of undergraduate programs in public health to further elucidate the undergraduate landscape.

The effect of birth month on the risk of respiratory syncytial virus hospitalization in the first year of life in the United States.

Background: Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the most common cause of severe respiratory illness in infants. To help direct targeted interventions and future RSV vaccine programs, we examined risk of RSV-related hospitalization by infant age and birth month.

Methods: We conducted Poisson regression analyses to evaluate birth month as a risk factor for RSV-related pediatric hospitalizations (identified by any mention of ICD-9-CM diagnosis codes: 466.

Community colleges and public health: making the connections.

Community colleges, in collaboration with public health agencies, can advance public health education by reaching a diverse student body, integrating public health into general education, and providing specialized associate degrees that serve workforce needs. Career ladders that include transferability of coursework to 4-year institutions and continuing education, including certificate programs, are key to success of these efforts. Community, or 2-year, colleges are well positioned to connect components of the Healthy People Curriculum Task Force's Education for Health framework by providing general education core courses in public health, epidemiology, and global health compatible with the educated citizen and public health movement.

Healthy People 2020 and Education for Health: what are the objectives?

The Education for Health framework is designed as an educational roadmap for Healthy People 2020. It aims to connect the educational phases and suggests overall educational strategies needed to educate health professionals and the public to achieve a healthier America. The framework seeks to develop a seamless approach to prevention and population health education from Pre-K through graduate school.

Undergraduate public health education: past, present, and future.

The IOM's 2003 report Who Will Keep the Public Healthy? recommended that "...

Evidence-based public health education as preparation for medical school.

The Institute of Medicine has recommended that all undergraduates have access to public health education. An evidence-based public health framework including curricula such as "Public Health 101" and "Epidemiology 101" was recommended for all colleges and universities by arts and sciences, public health, and clinical health professions educators as part of the Consensus Conference on Undergraduate Public Health Education. These courses should foster critical thinking whereby students learn to broadly frame options, critically analyze data, and understand the uncertainties that remain.

Commentary: Health systems and health policy: a curriculum for all medical students.

A companion article in this issue of Academic Medicine provides an example of a method for electively integrating health systems and health policy issues into medical education. However, a curriculum in health systems and health policy is crucial to the education of all future physicians and other health professionals. The Clinical Prevention and Population Health Curriculum Framework of the Healthy People Curriculum Task Force has recently recommended a health systems and health policy curriculum that includes the domains of organization of clinical and public health systems; health services financing; health workforce; and health policy process.

Clinical prevention and population health: curriculum framework for health professions.

The Clinical Prevention and Population Health Curriculum Framework is the initial product of the Healthy People Curriculum Task Force convened by the Association of Teachers of Preventive Medicine and the Association of Academic Health Centers. The Task Force includes representatives of allopathic and osteopathic medicine, nursing and nurse practitioners, dentistry, pharmacy, and physician assistants. The Task Force aims to accomplish the Healthy People 2010 goal of increasing the prevention content of clinical health professional education.

Reading the research literature. Putting randomized clinical trials into practice. 2.

Randomized clinical trials (RCT) are our best available method for determining whether a treatment works or has what we technically call efficacy. RCTs set out to demonstrate that a particular treatment regimen works better than a conventional standard treatment or placebo, for a particular type of patient, with a particular condition or indication. The results of an RCT are, generally, used by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as the basis for approving treatments--especially drug treatments.

Interaction and intervention modeling: predicting and extrapolating the impact of multiple interventions.

Purpose: Methods called interaction and intervention modeling are presented. Interaction modeling examines the interactions between variables as the basis for predicting the impact of multiple variables on a target population and on populations with difference distributions of risk factors. Intervention modeling incorporates these interactions and aims to extrapolate the impact of multiple interventions to new populations.