Effective Clinical Partnerships between Primary Care Medical Practices and Public Health Agencies
The purposes of the study reported in this monograph were:
- To identify partnerships between public health and medicine that increase the effectiveness and efficiency of clinical care, with a particular emphasis on the aging population; and
- Through a careful examination of current models, to identify themes and lessons that would be useful in the expansion, replication, and broader application of such partnerships.
The monograph is divided into four sections. The introduction reviews the literature on primary care/public health partnerships. The methods used in our research are described in the second section. The third section describes the 48 programs we identified and profiled, thereby providing an inventory of the wide range of partnerships currently in operation. The fourth section presents the results of qualitative analyses of in-depth interviews we conducted with key participants in a selection of 16 programs. The final section presents our conclusions and recommendations.
Our research methods included conducting a national scan to identify successful ongoing programs, gathering detailed information from a sample of the identified programs, and analyzing the data to identify themes and lessons that could be drawn from the experiences of these pioneers.
We believe that the U.S. health care system would benefit greatly from more integration between population-oriented and individual patient care systems. This monograph is intended to foster movement in that direction.