Program Origin and Background

Over the past decade, clinical care has rapidly evolved to become more team-based across professions, and has begun to shift from acute-care settings to community settings. To provide high quality, safe, coordinated, person-centered care in the 21st century, nurses and other health professionals must be better prepared to lead and collaborate in interprofessional teams in community settings. In 2010, the Institute of Medicine published the landmark report: The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health, which outlined major recommendations for the role of nurses in the development and leadership and of emerging collaborative care models . To facilitate implementation of the report’s recommendations, The Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action (CFA), a national initiative, was developed and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. In 2015 the IOM published a follow up report, Assessing Progress on the IOM Report the Future of Nursing, documenting progress in the implementation of the 2010 recommendations. Both reports strongly highlight the need for interprofessional education in settings other than acute care.

Recognizing the importance of interprofessional education and collaboration, the John A. Hartford Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation have come together to create an initiative to achieve one of the report’s aims. These partners are supporting the National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education to coordinate a one-time program, Accelerating Interprofessional Community-Based Education and Practice, to accelerate interprofessional education and collaboration through creative, robust and sustainable interprofessional partnerships in which graduate nursing and one or more other professions actively learn and work together with individuals and their families in community-based clinical settings.

Given the important foundational work of the Campaign for Action (CFA) and the 51 Action Coalitions, successful applicants must demonstrate a collaboration with their state’s Action Coalition to build upon existing work. In addition, to reflect the changing US demographics and need for high quality care of geriatric patients, a subset of the funded projects will address the comprehensive, coordinated, continuous, and expert care of older persons by improving the competence in geriatric care of a team of health professionals. The program is open to all schools with graduate health professional (nursing, medicine, pharmacy, social work and others) and other non-health related professional schools (business, architecture, law, education and others) that are committed to developing an innovative and ongoing core interprofessional clinical initiative in a community-based setting.

Eligibility:

Applicants must be an accredited nursing school with graduate programs committed to working in partnership with other health and non-health related professional schools and a community-based clinical partner.
Applicants must partner with at least one other professional school (health or non-health) and a community-based clinical site.
The principal investigator must be a faculty member in a nursing school/program, based in the United States or its territories.
Proposals that demonstrate existing interprofessional relationships that will be accelerated by this funding are encouraged.

16 projects were selected based on the following criteria:

Creativity of the initiative and its potential to accelerate interprofessional collaborative practice in community settings
Extent to which the proposed initiative will foster learner development in the IPEC core competencies
Degree to which the initiative is threaded through the participating program(s) curricula
Demonstrated collaboration with the community partners, including how the initiative meets the community needs
Demonstrated involvement of at least 20% of the students from each participating program.
Extent to which the proposed student involvement will change the learning culture of the participating programs and promote “spread” of the initiative efforts within and across the participating schools.
Demonstrated commitment to sustainability of the initiative and/or continued collaboration of the schools and the community after funding ends
Demonstrated commitment from community organization to this initiative
Demonstrated linkage with Future of Nursing: State Action Coalition
Demonstrated commitment from faculty, school administration (deans) and university administration (provost/president)
Demonstrated commitment to working with an independent evaluation team
Demonstrated commitment of a cash match.

Selection Process:

The National Center screened applications and forwarded those that meet the selection criteria to a national advisory council for review.
Based upon national advisory council recommendations, the National Center selected finalists.
Recipients were notified September 20, 2016.

Program Elements

Funded programs will receive technical assistance, expert consultation and resources from the National Center to accelerate their interprofessional education and collaboration efforts in community settings. The National Center, based at the University of Minnesota, is a unique public-private partnership charged by its funders to provide the leadership, evidence and resources needed to guide the nation on the use of interprofessional education and collaborative practice as a way to enhance the experience of health care, improve population health and reduce the overall cost of care.

The technical assistance, consultation and resources provided by the National Center include:

Participation by the initiative team in a mandatory three-day kick-off institute, New Models of Care Require New Models of Learning, scheduled for October 24-26, 2016;
Ongoing engagement in a virtual national learning community for interprofessional education and collaborative practice beginning in January 2017;
Participation as a Nexus Innovation Network (NIN) site using comparative effectiveness research to advance local efforts while contributing to the national understanding about IPE in the community;
Technical assistance, including a site visit, from the National Center team;
Program evaluation services facilitated by the National Center; and
Invitation to other national meetings offered by the National Center