Essential Public Health Competencies for Medical Students: Establishing a Consensus in Family Medicine

ABSTRACTPhenomenon: The integration of public health (PH) competency training into medical education, and further integration of PH and primary care, has been urged by the U.S. Institute of Medicine. However, PH competencies are numerous, and no consensus exists over which competencies are most important for adoption by current trainees. Our objective was to conduct a group concept mapping exercise with stakeholders identifying the most important and feasible PH skills to incorporate in medical and residency curricula. Approach: We utilized a group concept mapping technique via the Concept System Global Max (http://www.conceptsystems.com), where family medicine educators and PH professionals completed the phrase, “A key Public Health competency for physicians-in-training to learn is …” with 1–10 statements. The statement list was edited for duplication and other issues; stakeholders then sorted the statements and rated them for importance and feasibility of integration. Multidimensional scaling and cluste...