Message From the Editor in Chief: Health Education Specialists and the Interprofessional Education Movement

摘要

The purpose statement of our journal explains that we are open to receiving works by those from all of the health professions, as long as they relate their work to the teaching of students and professionals about health promotion planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. While the health education specialists may be viewed as tangential to the health enhancement team, especially as they relate to individual clinical care, within the scope of the goals of an emerging interprofessional education movement the health education specialist should be able to lay claim to a high level of value-added service. In my review of the book Philosophical Foundations of Health Education by Black, Furney, Graf, and Nolte (2009), I noted that "a health educator has the bragging rights as the Iron man' in health care and wellness fields," given the range of sites in which health education specialists work and their broad scope of skills, competencies, and overall contribution to the health enhancement team (Gambescia, 2011, p. 6). In 2009, six national education associations of schools of the health professions in the United States formed a collaborative to promote and encourage constituent efforts that would advance substantive interprofessional learning experiences to help prepare future health professionals for enhanced team-based care of patients and improved population health outcomes (Interprofessional Education Collaborative Expert Panel, 2011). These organizations that represent higher education in allopathic and osteopathic medicine, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, and public health created core competencies for interprofessional collaborative practice to guide curricula development across health professions schools. Since this collaborative, almost all health professions preparation programs are planning (formally via curriculum changes or informally via co-curricular activities) how to expose students and those in continuing professional education programs to interprofessional practice and meet program accreditation standards (Interprofessional Education Collaborative, 2016).