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Wendy Glauser’s recent piece outlined barriers for medical curricula to meet emerging health challenges.(1) However, trainees are helping to reshape education from the ground up to address an increasingly complex practice environment. Complexity should be embraced, as it reflects our richer understanding of illness processes, social adaptations, and myriad determinants of health.
Early introduction of emerging issues avoids blindspots that could perpetuate systematic neglect of important determinants of health as doctors progress in their careers.(2) Luckily, there are multiple new models for innovative medical education that can effectively integrate policy, public health, and clinical medicine to better prepare future leaders to tackle complexity with analytical and problem-solving skills.
For example, last month, the International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations launched their vision for climate health curricula in every medical school, worldwide, by 2020.(3) With ample foresight, the Canadian Federation of Medical Students pushed for faculties of medicine to ‘comprehensively address’ climate health topics in all curricula with their 2016 position paper.(4)
The Global Health Emergency Medicine group at the University of Toronto is working with journalism fellowship graduates to lead several initiatives to study and scale-up practical, hands-on advocacy skills for medical trainees.(5) Elsewhere, public health residents at McMaster University have partnered with faculty at the University of Toronto to develop an interactive simulation that explores solutions to the opioid crisis where healthcare intersects with policy-making, community engagement, and law enforcement.
Given the long lead time to practice change, early exposure to these topics is critical. Sluggish knowledge translation to graduated doctors, as indicated by Dr. Chan,(1) underscores the importance of introducing ‘emerging’ concepts as soon as possible. This is especially urgent when some topics, such as climate change and health, have been supported by a robust evidence base for decades.
In order to gain maximal impact, we must avoid compartmentalizing these issues as ‘special interest’ CME topics. Broader understanding of health outcomes will lead to improved quality, access, and equity of care for all patients.(6)
Edward Xie, MD MSc CCFP(EM)
Jennifer Hulme, MD CM MPH CCFP(EM)
Courtney Howard, MD CCFP(EM)
1. Glauser W. Are medical schools keeping up with the times? Toronto2018 [cited 2018 August 8]. Available from: https://cmajnews.com/2018/08/01/are-medical-schools-keeping-up-with-the-....
2. McGregor M, Bryan S, Brasher P, Howard C. Why is Canada so behind in research on climate change and health? 2018 [cited 2018 August 8]. Available from: http://healthydebate.ca/opinions/climate-change-and-health.
3. International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations. 2020 Vision for Climate-Health in Medical Curricula 2018 [Available from: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeMxig6Yhs4qJU8oboKXm0KqGXRj64f....
4. Saraswat M, Lau K, Mazze N, Shen C, Wang A, Gibson R, et al. Climate Change and Global Health: Training Future Physicians to Act and Mitigate. Canadian Federation of Medical Students; 2016.
5. Global Health Emergency Medicine. Health Equity Committee 2018 [Available from: http://ghem.ca/project/health-equity-committee/.
6. Beavis AS, Hojjati A, Kassam A, Choudhury D, Fraser M, Masching R, et al. What all students in healthcare training programs should learn to increase health equity: perspectives on postcolonialism and the health of Aboriginal Peoples in Canada. BMC Med Educ. 2015;15:155.