Resource Center

Interdisciplinary Education as a Prelude to Interdisciplinary Practice (or Vice Versa)

The Fourth Congress of Health Professions Educators, held in June 1997, marked the first program developed and held under the auspices of the new Center for Interdisciplinary, Community-Based Learning (CICL). In February 1997, AHC and the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) ofthe U.S. Department of Health and Human Services jointly established this Center, which will receive three-year government funding and has three broad aims. First, the AHC/HRSA Center will seek to strengthen and institutionalize academic health centers' commitment to interdisciplinary, community-based learning, particularly in underserved areas. Second, the Center will provide expertise to academic health centers with respect to model curricula and training sites for interdisciplinary, community-based learning. Third, CICL will support an interdisciplinary network of health care professionals working to create and strengthen an interdisciplinary, community-based curriculum.
The Fourth Congress focused on interdisciplinary education as a prelude to interdisciplinary practice, but also pondered the extent to which the latter drives the former. The papers in this book offer lessons from educators' and clinicians' experiences in the field, commentaries on why interdisciplinary activities have not progressed as rapidly or permeated as widely as we might have anticipated, as well as some suggestions on what we must do to move beyond the rhetoric.

Copyright © 1997 by the Association of Academic Health Centers. Available here with permission.