Interprofessional Education: Reaching Health Professionals With an Interactive Professional Virtual/Online Event on Advocacy and Policy.

Competencies in health policy and advocacy should be developed by all health professionals to effectively advance their professions but also effectively collaborate in interprofessional teams to improve public health. However, the COVID-19 epidemic presents a challenge to reaching students of health professions through face-to-face offerings. To meet this need, the University of South Florida College of Public Health developed asynchronous and synchronous online health policy and advocacy modules delivered to an interprofessional group of students pursuing health careers. After learning policy and advocacy material individually through a self-paced online curriculum, faculty gathered the students for a synchronous online event where they formed collaborative groups. In interprofessional teams, students prepared and presented advocacy briefs that were critiqued by the faculty. Post-event evaluation results showed that most students strongly agreed that the interprofessional event was very effective, and they all would recommend the program to other students. Universities and colleges educating students of health professions can take advantage of the technologies employed to keep students safe in the COVID-19 pandemic and still reach students effectively with interprofessional health policy and advocacy content.

Redesigning College Professional Development Resources to Meet the Needs of Emerging Public Health Professionals.

The University of South Florida, College of Public Health, is dedicated to providing career planning and professional development services for students in varying formats. However, changing public health training needs and an emerging need for focused attention on professional development necessitated the development of an evaluative program to better understand our students' needs in these areas. Specifically, anecdotal student feedback about feeling unprepared professionally and survey feedback from students, preceptor feedback regarding the need for students to be better trained in core professional concepts, and low rates of attendance in standard professional development events resulted in a quality improvement study to identify students' perceived career planning and professional development needs. Findings were used to redesign current services and provided the basis for developing more targeted trainings to ensure that public health graduates are better prepared to meet employer expectations and to excel in the workforce. This article provides an overview of this transformative process, including the results of the qualitative survey on student, faculty, alumni, and community preceptor perspectives, and resulting prototypes developed for the professional development pilot along with preliminary insights.

Factors contributing to intervention fidelity in a multi-site chronic disease self-management program.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Disease self-management programs have been a popular approach to reducing morbidity and mortality from chronic disease. Replicating an evidence-based disease management program successfully requires practitioners to ensure fidelity to the original program design. METHODS: The Florida Health Literacy Study (FHLS) was conducted to investigate the implementation impact of the Pfizer, Inc. Diabetes Mellitus and Hypertension Disease Self-Management Program based on health literacy principles in 14 community health centers in Florida. The intervention components discussed include health educator recruitment and training, patient recruitment, class sessions, utilization of program materials, translation of program manuals, patient retention and follow-up, and technical assistance. RESULTS: This report describes challenges associated with achieving a balance between adaptation for cultural relevance and fidelity when implementing the health education program across clinic sites. This balance was necessary to achieve effectiveness of the disease self-management program. The FHLS program was implemented with a high degree of fidelity to the original design and used original program materials. Adaptations identified as advantageous to program participation are discussed, such as implementing alternate methods for recruiting patients and developing staff incentives for participation. CONCLUSION: Effective program implementation depends on the talent, skill and willing participation of clinic staff. Program adaptations that conserve staff time and resources and recognize their contribution can increase program effectiveness without jeopardizing its fidelity.