The document describes the development of a Community of Practice (CoP) to bridge primary care and public health. The CoP will have three main goals: 1) To identify and integrate primary care and public health approaches to address health problems in the local community. 2) To provide a forum for sharing best practices and lessons learned between healthcare professionals. 3) To make recommendations on collaboratively developed solutions that further the group's mission of improving population health. The CoP will be hosted online and include faculty, students, and partners involved in the Primary Care Plus program. Initial discussions will focus on developing a charter and identifying potential community health problems to address through integrated primary care and public health

1. Laura Rudkin, Ph.D.
Professor and Interim Chair
Preventive Medicine & Community Health
The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston
Developing a Community of Practice
to Bridge Primary Care and Public Health

2. Health is …
Part individual good served by medicine and part
public good secured by public health activities.
Health is associated with a complex, and not entirely understood,
interplay among innate individual factors, personal behavior, and a vast
array of powerful environmental conditions.
Institute of Medicine, 2003
The Future of the Public’s Health in the 21st Century

3. Origins of the Primary
Care Plus Program
(The Plus is Public Health.)

4. Primary Care Plus Program
Premise:
Health improvement, disparities reduction follow from
integrated primary care, public health efforts.
Focus:
Providing MD and PA students knowledge, skills, and
values needed to partner with public health
Funding:
Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)
Primary Care Training Enhancement Grant

5. Primary Care and Public Health
Primary Care
“the provision of integrated, accessible
health care services by clinicians who are
accountable for addressing a large
majority of personal health care needs,
developing a sustained partnership with
patients, and practicing in the context of
family and community (p. S-2).”
Public Health
“(the provision of services) to fullfill society’s
interest in assuring conditions in which
people can be healthy (p. S-2).”
(IOM, 2012)

6. Primary Care and Public Health
“Primary care and public health presently operate largely independently,
but have complementary functions and the common goal of assuring a
healthier population.
By working together, primary care and public health can each achieve their
own goals and simultaneously have a greater impact on the health of
populations than either of them would have working independently.
Each has knowledge, resources, and skills that can be used to assist the
other in carrying out its roles.
They should be viewed as two interacting and mutually supportive
components of a health system designed to improve the health of
populations.” (p. S-4, IOM, 2012)

7. Degrees of Integration
Integration = linkage of programs, activities to promote overall efficiency,
effectiveness, achieve gains in population health
1. Shared goal of improved population health
2. Willingness, ability to contribute to shared goal
3. Commitment to ongoing process, continual dialogue

8. Examples of Integration
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pNkTy8eT2Q8

9. Asthma, Hepatitis B, EMR

10. Communities of
Practice

11. Communities of Practice
CoPs “are groups of people who share a
concern or a passion for something
they do and learn how to do it better
as they interact regularly.”
Etienne Wenger-Trayner
has authored several
seminal books on
Communities of Practice.

12. Communities of Practice
CoPs “are groups of people who share a concern or a
passion for something they do and learn how to do
it better as they interact regularly.”
Etienne Wenger-Trayner
has authored several
seminal books on
Communities of Practice.
2009
2002
1999

13. CoPs in Public Health
“Working to strengthen public health as members learn,
share expertise, and work together on solving common
problems in their communities’ focus areas.”
“Provide a collaborative framework for public health professionals to work
together to identify and leverage best practices and standards. Through
these evolving collaborative efforts and sharing of lessons learned in the
community building process, the community of practice approach is being
implemented in many public health areas as a model of how public health
partners can work together.”
www.cdc.gov/phcommunities

14. CoPs in Public Health
Domain
Shared interest that provides the incentive,
passion for group to come together
Community
Group of people who come together with common
interest, who share perspectives and knowledge
Practice
Agreed upon ways of formalizing, implementing collectively developed
knowledge and solutions that further the community’s mission
“A community that enables interaction, has a shared domain of interest,
and a shared practice of experiences, stories, tools, and ways of
addressing recurrent problems.”

15. PC+ CoP
Primary Care Plus
Community of Practice

16. PC+ CoP
Domain
Shared goal of addressing community health problems in the
Galveston-Houston area and throughout Texas
Community
Initial participants will include faculty, students, and community
partners involved in the Primary Care Plus Program
Practice
Identifying and integrating primary care and public health
approaches to solving specific problems and acting on group
recommendations

17. PC+ Community Partners

18. UTMB Primary Care Practices

19. Logistics for the PC+ CoP
Face-to-Face meetings monthly
3rd Monday of each month at noon (tentative)
Opportunity to connect in real time or view online later
Online discussion continues for 4 weeks
PC+ CoP hosted on CDC’s phConnect site
www.phconnect.org
Synthesis of discussion at end of 4 weeks
Recommendations for next steps

20. Roles in the PC+ CoP
Community Leader
Laura Rudkin
Community Sponsors
Judy Rowen
Holly West
Christine Arcari
Melanie de Boer
Technology Management
Allie Glaser
Relationship Management
Courtney Taylor
Subject Matter Expertise
All contribute
Novice to Expert
Invited participants may be included
Knowledge Management
Rotating responsibility by month
Student-faculty teams will synthesize
Meeting Facilitation
Rotating responsibility by month
Communication Management
Shared responsibility by month and over
time

21. CDC’s phConnect (phconnect.org)

22. Steps to Join the PC+ CoP
1. Sign up for phConnect. http://www.phconnect.org/
2. Create a user bio.
3. Ask to join the PC+ CoP.
http://www.phconnect.org/group/utmb-primary-care-plus
4. Connect to others and join other groups as desired.
5. Start participating in the PC+ CoP and other communities!
As of 8/5, the site is experiencing problems with the search function. Our group
and people are not being found in the search. Just use the link in step 3 to find
our group.

23. August Discussions on PC+ CoP
1. Developing the PC+ CoP Community Charter
a. What is the scope of our mission?
b. How should we identify target problems?
c. What are our deliverables?
d. Who can be a member? What are the member
expectations?
2. Generating a List of Potential Problems to Address

24. Let’s Explore
www.phconnect.org