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AMA launches $10 million initiative to remodel medical education
The American Medical Association has announced a competitive $10 million grant that challenges medical schools to submit proposals for bold, innovative projects to alter medical education, according to a press release.
“Rapid changes in health care require a transformation in the way we train future physicians,” Jeremy A. Lazarus, MD, president of the AMA, said in the press release. “The AMA is deeply committed to redesigning undergraduate medical education to prepare the medical students of today for the health care of tomorrow.”
The grant is part of the Accelerating Change in Medical Education initiative introduced by the AMA last year, providing $10 million during the next 5 years ($2 million per year) to fund eight to 10 selected projects.
According to the press release, the grant will be awarded to medical schools for the following:
- Developing new methods for teaching and/or assessing key competencies for medical students and fostering methods to create more flexible, individualized learning plans.
- Promoting exemplary methods to achieve patient safety, performance improvement and patient-centered, team-based care, and improving understanding of the health care system and health care financing in medical training.
- Enhancing development of professionalism throughout the medical education learning environment.
The request for proposals has begun, and recipients will be announced at its annual meeting in June. For more information, go to www.changemeded.org.
Perspective
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The AMA’s initiative to fund innovative practices in medical education is laudable. At the same time, undergraduate medical education has been moving in this direction for a number of years now, although continued improvement is clearly needed. Early exposure of students to medical care of patients in diverse settings, expanded curricula addressing medicine and society, cultural competence, health ethics, social justice, and disparity in health care access and quality are just a few initiatives that have been ongoing at my institution and at many others around the country. The same issues and need for innovative new curriculum abound in graduate medical education and, in my estimation, are harder to address in the setting of residency and fellowship training, especially when you consider that much of the funding for GME positions comes from inpatient-based MediCare/CMS entitlements. Securing funding streams as diverse and innovative as the curricular needs is an important and currently, largely unmet need.