Development of Health Professions Education Competencies for a National Fellowship Program: A Group Consensus Process.

ABSTRACT: Health professions educators need knowledge, skills, and attitudes to provide high-quality education within dynamic clinical learning environments. Although postgraduate training opportunities in health professions education (HPE) have increased significantly, no shared competencies exist across the field. This article describes the systematic development of postgraduate HPE competencies for the Health Professions Education, Evaluation, and Research (HPEER) Advanced Fellowship, a 2-year, interprofessional, post-master's degree and postdoctoral HPE training program funded through the Department of Veterans Affairs' Office of Academic Affiliations. Using a modified RAND/University of California at Los Angeles Appropriateness Method, the authors developed competencies from March 2021 to August 2021 that were informed by current practices and standards in HPE. Literature reviews were conducted of published literature from November 2020 to February 2021 and gray literature from February to March 2021, identifying 78 and 274 HPE training competencies, respectively. These competencies were combined with 71 competencies submitted by program faculty from 6 HPEER fellowship sites, resulting in 423 initial competencies. Competencies were organized into 6 primary domains and condensed by deleting redundant items and combining overlapping concepts. Eight subject matter experts completed 3 Delphi surveys and met during 2 nominal group technique meetings. The final 25 competencies spanned 6 domains: teaching methods and learning theories; educational assessment and program evaluation; educational research methods; diversity, equity, and inclusion; interprofessional practice and team science; and leadership and management. In addition to informing the national HPEER curriculum, program evaluation, and learner assessment, these advanced competencies describe the knowledge, skills, and attitudes health professions educators need to provide high-quality education with an emphasis on the global and societal impact of HPE. These competencies represent a step toward leveraging HPE expertise to establish competencies to drive HPE program changes. Other programs should report their competencies and competency development processes to spur further dialog and progress.

Study Design and Protocol to Assess Fruit and Vegetable Waste at School Lunches.

This paper has two main aims: (1) to describe the design, implementation, and testing of a protocol to assess longitudinal changes in F&V plate waste conducted as part of a quasi-experimental study, (2) to provide baseline descriptive data on school demographics and study participants. This paper describes the protocol development and implementation, and presents baseline data of a longitudinal fruit and vegetable (F&V) plate waste study. The protocol was developed to determine the preliminary impact of Brighter Bites, a 16-week school-based nutrition intervention, on F&V wasted and nutrients wasted from school lunches. We measured plate waste using a quasi-experimental design (n = 2 intervention schools receiving Brighter Bites, n=1 comparison school; n = 115 4th and 5th grade children). We measured plate waste for five days at each of four time points over the 2017-2018 academic year (baseline prior to intervention, three additional time points). Data collectors measured lunch F&V waste using digital scales and recorded weights on a data collection app. This study was conducted in three central Texas public elementary schools serving predominantly low-income families (>89% of children on free/reduced lunch program). On average, at baseline, 59.1% of all F&V were wasted and children tried <1 F&V at meals. Foods most wasted were legumes and foods least wasted were par-fried baked potatoes. Final retention rate across the four time points was 75.70%. Measurement inter-rater reliability was 100% (r = 0.99). Our study presents a protocol for detailed, individual-level, longitudinal plate waste assessment in elementary schools.