Danielle Snyderman, MD Kellie Smith, RN, MSN
Christine Wade, EdD, PT, RN

The newly formed Jefferson InterProfessional Education Center (JCIPE) is dedicated to training teams of health professions faculty to engage in innovative interprofessional preventive education which will lead to improvements in the health of patients and the education of students. In September 2007 a team from Jefferson, including Danielle Snyderman (Medicine), Christine Wade (Physical Therapy), and Kellie Smith (Nursing) participated in an Institute for Interprofessional Prevention Education sponsored by the Association for Prevention Teaching and Research (APTR). The Institute promoted innovative change in health care education through knowledge dissemination, shared resources, and provided strategies for the expansion of interprofessional prevention initiatives on campus. Specific sessions focused on how to cultivate an environment to advance interprofessional education, interprofessional approaches to improve patient safety and clinical effectiveness, and how to identify and measure outcomes.

Through a team based approach, the team members were able to enhance Move4Health which is a student-designed public health program that partners physician faculty from TJU's Department of Family and Community Medicine with medical, physical therapy and nursing students of TJU. Sedentary lifestyle and poor nutrition have contributed to an epidemic of diabetes. Studies suggest that preventive medicine and early intervention are the most effective and cost-efficient ways to manage this chronic disease. Jefferson students (medical, public health, PT) have developed a specific response, Move4Health (M4H), which provides education and physical activity to women with diabetes. M4H is a 13-week student-led program, which focuses on patient self efficacy, and quantitative measures of blood pressure, body mass index, and hemoglobin A1C through an exercise-based diabetic education program.

Through the sessions at the APTR Institute, team members were able to develop a formal curriculum in interprofessional prevention to add enhanced faculty support to the M4H program. After conducting a survey of existing interprofessional and prevention curriculum, these faculty members will be responsible for developing a formal didactic curriculum in interprofessional prevention. Topics will include definition and strategies for prevention, principles of population health, and fundamentals of lifestyle and behavioral strategies to maintain health. A web-based self-study curriculum will be created, and faculty will work with appropriate course directors in each discipline to integrate this new material into existing discipline-specific courses.

The interprofessional faculty will also serve an advisory role to student leaders of M4H assisting in ongoing program development and evaluation, with particular emphasis on maximizing interprofessional collaboration and teamwork. Lessons learned working with M4H will serve to inform additional service learning opportunities, with the long-term goal of developing enough interprofessional prevention programs to ensure that each Jefferson health profession student will participate in a meaningful interprofessional prevention curriculum during their education.

The team submitted a grant proposal to the Association for Prevention Teaching and Research (APTR) and received notification that the M4H Interprofessional education project was funded for one year, ending September 2008. Their abstract entitled Working Together: a Collaborative Approach to Disease Prevention Education has been accepted for poster presentation during Preventive Medicine 2008 in Austin, Texas on February 21, 2008.