Resource Center

The World Health Organization defines the social determinants of health as “the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age, and the wider set of forces and systems shaping the conditions of daily life.” These forces and systems include economic policies, development agendas, cultural and social norms, social policies, and political systems.

Interprofessional collaboration is integral to effective patient care in today's healthcare system. Early exposure to other professions in a hands-on manner during education can be helpful for future practice. However, opportunities for interprofessional education are typically faculty driven and remain limited. Thirty-eight students from different health professions at the University of British Columbia worked collaboratively to promote cardiovascular risk reduction in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

As in previous editions, this year’s Annual Review of the Evidence provides a summary of PCMH cost and utilization results from peer-reviewed studies, state government evaluations, industry reports, and new this year, independent federal program evaluations published between October 2014 and November 2015. It reviews the recent evidence for PCMH and advanced primary care in light of new and long-awaited developments in health system payment reform including Medicare’s transition to value-based payments and passage of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA).

Click here to access the report. 

This report highlights four areas of National Center progress during Year Three. Because of the sheer volume of National Center activity, we have chosen our most important achievements – showing where we are making a significant difference in the national conversation about health care transformation.

Highlights of Year Three include: 

Over the past half century, there have been ebbs and flows of interest in linking what is now called interprofessional education (IPE) with interprofessional collaboration and team-based care. Whereas considerable research has focused on student learning, only recently have researchers begun to look beyond the classroom and beyond learning outcomes for the impact of IPE on such issues as patient safety, patient and provider satisfaction, quality of care, health promotion, population health, and the cost of care.

Improved inclusion of women’s health education among a growing cadre of health professionals is a key task for the coming decade. Today, experts in the field of women’s health define the discipline as a product of cultural, social, and psychological factors in addition to biology (Verdonk, Benschop, de Haes, & Lagro-Janssen, 2009). Independent approaches to improve women’s health curricula can promote advances in the field. However, women’s health education would also benefit from a collaborative effort to create a broader agenda for women’s health curricula.

With rapid health care transformation efforts underway across the nation, there is increasing attention on strategies to improve outcomes and reduce avoidable costs for the small subset of individuals who account for the majority of health care spending. As innovative models emerge, policymakers, payers, and providers are eager to identify and scale effective approaches for serving high-need, high-cost patients.

This report provides a primer for implementing interprofessional education (IPE) within pharmacy and health sciences curricula. In 2013, a panel of administrators and faculty members, whose institutions offered IPE, funded by the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, shared best collaborative practice models at the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) Annual Meeting. These presenters subsequently collaborated to write a primer as guidance for other institutions interested in successfully implementing and continuously enhancing the quality of IPE programs.

Lead Institution: The University of Queensland

Authors: The iTOFT Consortium, Australia (2015)

This project focuses on the development of a work-based assessment tool to enable feedback to individuals in relation to teamwork.