Identifying population health faculty in US medical schools

Context: An Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) panel has proposed the components of a population health (PH) curriculum for U.S. medical schools. Do schools have the trained faculty to teach these subjects well? Objective: Determine the number and location of full-time medical school faculty formally trained in the population health sciences through art MPH degree, a public health (PH)-related doctoral degree, a residency in preventive medicine, or board certification in preventive medicine in 1990 and 1998. Design: This is a descriptive study based on the AAMC Faculty Roster System that includes information about all full-time U.S. medical school faculty. Results: In 1998, 2007 out of a total of 88,782 full-time medical school faculty had MPH degrees and 1214 had a PH-related doctoral degree. A total of 484 faculty had residency training in preventive medicine while 279 had passed the preventive medicine board examination. Faculty with these various degrees are distributed among multiple departments. Since 1990, most growth in new faculty formally trained in the population health sciences has been in family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics rather than preventive medicine. Conclusions: Full-time medical school faculty with MPH degrees and PH-related doctoral degrees hale grown faster than total faculty since 1990. Faculty with residency training or board certification in preventive medicine have grown much more slowly. Faculty formally trained in the PH sciences are distributed among departments of preventive medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics, among others. Unfortunately, a significant number of medical schools have very few faculty formally trained in the PH sciences. The implications of this distribution for the education of medical students are discussed.