Resource Center

This Macy Conference that was held April 3 to 6, 2014, in Arlington, Virginia represented the Macy Foundation’s first formal initiative to bring together the worlds of health professions education, healthcare delivery, and patient and community advocacy. The conference was chaired by Terry Fulmer, PhD, RN, FAAN and Martha Gaines, JD, LLM.

In order to lay the groundwork for this conference and bring all participants up to a common level of understanding of the issues, we commissioned a “vision paper” and four case studies. The paper “A Vision for Engaging Patients, Families and Communities in Linking Interprofessional Education and Practice” was written by Angela Coulter from the University of Oxford and Michael Barry from the Informed Medical Decisions Foundation in Boston. The four case studies were from the Université de Montréal, the University of Rochester Medical Center, the Veterans Health Administration, and the Duke University School of Medicine.

Conferees met in plenary sessions and breakout groups over three days to generate the consensus recommendations in four broad areas: changes needed in the content and conduct of health professions education, changes needed in education and healthcare organizations, steps needed to build the capacity for partnerships, and reforms needed in regulations and payment.

The report was edited by Teri Larson.