Doctoring Course AHEC/E

 CHS Population Medicine Longitudinal Experience Overview

The Area Health Education Center Experience (AHEC/E) supports the population health theme of the Doctoring course.   It is a four-year longitudinal activity which will place each student into a home base in the community to master the principles and practices of community health improvement from a medical student perspective.  The AHEC/E will be supported by complementary Rootstown-based didactic instruction throughout the curriculum.

AHEC, Health Professions Education, and Underserved Care

In 1978 the Area Health Education Center (AHEC)  was initiated nationwide to promote primary care practice and to educate health professions students about the needs of medically underserved populations.  NEOUCOM participates with the six other Ohio medical schools in supporting undergraduate and graduate medical, nursing and allied health education in Ohio.  NEOUCOM’s AHEC serves 14 counties in northeastern Ohio through three community-based centers: the Eastern Ohio Area Health Education Center in Youngstown, the Summit Portage Area Health Education Center in Akron and the Canton Regional Area Health Education Center in Canton. The Centers plan and develop educational programs based on their assessment of local resources, health personnel needs and the interest of each community.

AHEC’s overall mission is to improve the availability of physicians and other health care professionals in underserved areas to enhance access to quality health care through academic and community collaboration.  It does this by

·        providing clinical experience for health professions students in underserved communities,

·        providing continuing education to health professionals, recruiting students into health careers with an emphasis on underserved populations, and

·        providing health promotion and disease prevention programs.

At NEOUCOM, the AHEC program is based in the Department of Community Health Sciences.

AHEC/E Educational Goals

The Institute of Medicine, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, and the College of Medicine have all recommended population medicine educational goals.  Based upon these, students in the AHEC/E portion of the Doctoring course will specifically be required to:  

·        apply knowledge of the incidence and prevalence of disease in the community, whether defined by geography, culture,  clinical practice, or by age or other demographic characteristics; and

·        understand and incorporate biological, psychological, cultural, social, developmental, and environmental principles of disease prevention and treatment appropriate for specific populations of patients within a community and across the lifespan.

·        apply an understanding of the impact of illness on families, caregivers,  and communities, and the importance of exogenous factors in prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation;

·        show an awareness that major changes in individual and community health are likely to depend as much or more on individuals’ behavior, cultural context, support system and societal change as on medical care;

·        demonstrate an awareness of, and responsiveness to, the larger context and system of health care, particularly as regards the underserved and disadvantaged;

·        demonstrate the ability to collaborate effectively within multidisciplinary teams as well as to marshal other resources within the system to provide optimal care to individuals and populations;

·        demonstrate a willingness to accept a shared responsibility for the health of populations, including contributing to the identification and solution of community health problems;

·        apply an understanding of the organization of the US health care system to their medical activities by evaluating the health care needs of individuals and communities,  the efficacy of health care delivery,  and the functioning of community health services including the ability to interpret relevant laws and regulations and both the economic and policy bases of the current health care system.