Participants in the “Improving Health and Community Care: Focus on Education” teleconference on January 18 discussed the outcomes of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention project called Academic Partnerships to Improve Health (APIH). Sue Swider, PhD, APHN-BC, FAAN, a faculty member at Rush University and nationally recognized expert on public health nursing, highlighted her work with APIH. A summary of the hourlong  learning collaborative is below, with links to key areas of interest.

Since 2012, CDC has partnered with four national associations representing colleges and universities for the education of public health professionals, physicians, and nurses. The four are the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, Association of American Medical Colleges, Association for Prevention Teaching and Research, and Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health.

The cooperative agreements offered opportunities for CDC to engage with academic partners to:

• Strengthen academia’s linkages to public health practice.
• Enhance teaching of population health concepts and their full integration into health professionals’ education.
• Align academic approaches (curricula, teaching materials, or methods) and field experiences with ground-level public health priorities and practice needs.
• Provide opportunities for hands-on experience for students working with communities and public health partners.

One of the many important outcomes of this work is Curriculum Support for Public Health, a list of resources for implementing public health and population health concepts into nursing curricula. Swider encouraged widespread use of these resources as nurse educators change curricula to reflect our changing health care environment.