There is a big distinction between people just working together with their own agenda and working together towards a common purpose…When a community of learners transforms into a learning community, the outcome is far greater than the sum of the individual parts.
Lori Nishiura, “On Learning”
Many local and state health departments have had connections to academic institutions over the years. Generally these connections have started with requests to provide practical experiences for health professions students but in many cases have expanded to include collaborative service and research activities and the sharing of resources for teaching and problem-solving. In some settings these relationships have been formalized and involved health departments that have been labeled “
Academic Health Departments (AHDs).”
The
Council on Linkages Between Academia and Public Health Practice (COL) has been following these developments and believes recent trends and activities enhance the potential for AHDs to contribute meaningfully to the quest to improve the quality of community-based training, service and research in the following ways: the support of the Association of American Medical Colleges to improve the teaching of public health in medical schools, the support of the Association of Schools of Public Health for the development of more AHDs connected to public health schools, the development of a formalized Public Health Systems and Services Research program with the creation of Public Health Practice-Based Research Networks, the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that emphasizes the importance of prevention and community-based effectiveness research, and the growing number of health departments that characterize themselves as AHDs.
The COL, therefore, with financial support from the Human Resources and Services Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is developing a national “
AHD Learning Community” to engage the practice and academic communities in a process to foster an exchange of ideas about the AHD concept. The intent is to understand and characterize such health departments and the environments in which they develop, identify mechanisms and tools that may be helpful for those contemplating the development of such departments, and address the mechanisms best suited for communication among those interested and/or involved.
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