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“Thanks
in large part to the work of the USPTF, it is no longer questioned that
appropriate preventive care belongs at the top of the list of effective
interventions that must be available to all Americans. At a time when the
leading causes of death are largely related to health-related behaviors –
including tobacco use, poor diet, lack of physical activity, and alcohol use
– it is particularly pertinent to highlight the importance of the health
consequences of behavior. It remains extraordinarily important that
physicians and other providers educate their patients about these matters.”
GUIDE TO CLINICAL PREVENTIVE SERVICES, Second
Edition
PHILIP R. LEE, M.D.
Assistant Secretary for Health
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Washington, DC
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In July of 2000,
Dr. David Satcher, the Surgeon General of the United States, declared a need
for prevention education in the basic medical education curriculum1.
The Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) agreed with Dr. Satcher’s
recommendations, noting medical faculty’s responsibility to create a
curriculum that includes preventive medicine.
The value of prevention is increasingly being emphasized in medical
educational institutions due to the growing prevalence and incidence of
preventable diseases in the U.S. population. The Preventive Medicine
Electronic Curriculum’s
goals are to provide up-to-date, clinically relevant information and
cutting edge research results regarding the broad fields included under the
rubric of Preventive Medicine.
In January
of 2000, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released Healthy
People 2010, a prevention agenda that identifies the most significant
preventable health threats and provides a road map toward improving health
based on scientific knowledge and strategic management. This initiative has
specific objectives in 28 focus areas with two overarching goals to increase
the quality and years of healthy life and to eliminate Health Disparities.
The Guide
to Clinical Preventive Services, Second edition was developed and published
in 1996 by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPTF). The Guide was
established to rigorously evaluate clinical research in order to provide
science –based preventive recommendations for services including screening
tests, counseling, immunizations, and chemoprevention. The mission of the
task force served by the Guide is to 1. Evaluate the benefits of individual
services, 2. Create age-, gender-, and risk-based recommendations about
services that should routinely be incorporated into primary medical care,
and 3. Identify a research agenda for clinical preventive care. This second
edition includes more than 200 services offered in primary care.
These
prevention resources provide the basis for clinical guidelines presented in
this course as they present an ideal platform for launching a basic
curriculum that includes the core competencies in health promotion and
disease prevention set forth by the American Association of Teachers of
Preventive Medicine.
The course material is
structured toward our main objectives to provide guidelines and information
for incorporating clinical preventive services into medical practice.
Clinical preventive services are relevant to all disciplines of medicine;
however it is most effective at the primary level mainly served by family
practice, internal medicine, ob-gyn, and pediatric services.
One exciting feature of this curriculum is that it provides the Preventive
Medicine Vertical Theme of the CWRU medical school curriculum in an
electronic format. See
course instructions and
course requirements
for information on completing this course.
1.
Satcher, D.
Academic Medicine.
2000;75(7):S1