Faculty Discuss Population Health at AAMC

Jeff Wolfrey, MD, professor and chair of the Department of Family, Community and Preventive Medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix, and Jason Leubner, MD, associate program director for Clinical Affairs, were recently invited to the national headquarters of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) in Washington, DC, to describe best practices in population health management at primary care residency programs.

The primary product of the meeting will be a report published by the AAMC. The meeting was supported by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and representatives from the AAMC and CDC participated. The lead author of the report will be Thomas Bodenheimer, MD, director of the Center for Excellence in Primary Care at the University of California San Francisco.

Residency programs known as innovators in population health education for Internal Medicine, Pediatrics and Family Medicine were invited to participate. The UA College of Medicine – Phoenix Family Medicine Residency has a long and rich tradition in family medicine at Banner – University Medical Center Phoenix.

Population health management is a systematic approach to ensuring that all members of a defined population receive appropriate preventive, chronic and transitional care.

Dr. Wolfrey said effective population health management is a critical success factor for a health care delivery system and an important component of the curriculum for residents and medical students.