How Healthy is Your Community?

There is a rising understanding that the social determinants of health—conditions in the places where people live, learn, work, and play—can have a substantial impact on an individual’s physical and mental well-being.

A new medical education program, made possible by a partnership between University of Utah and Intermountain Healthcare, will train the next generation of physicians in population health—which focuses on keeping people in communities healthy and preemptively addressing the cause of illnesses, rather than just treating people once they are sick. With looming physician shortages—the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates Utah will experience a shortage of 600 primary care physicians by 2025—a holistic approach to healthcare can’t come soon enough.

Intermountain is investing $50 million over multiple years in the initiative, which will help train and prepare physicians in this emerging discipline.

“I’m proud that these two organizations are leading the nation in developing a cadre of physicians specifically prepared to deliver this innovative approach to communities,” said Marc Harrison, MD, president and CEO of Intermountain Healthcare. “This will help develop the medical providers of the future who are focused on wellness rather than illness.”

The newly renamed U of U Intermountain Healthcare Department of Population Health Sciences will serve as the academic home for the initiative. Intermountain chose to partner with the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine based on its national reputation in population health and strength in developing and applying robust research methods to optimize population health outcomes.

“This program will change the way doctors think about providing medical care,” said Angie Fagerlin, PhD, chair of the Department of Population Health Sciences at the University of Utah. “They will better understand how to identify barriers to good health and how to help patients gain better health.”

Specifically, the investment from Intermountain will:

• Establish the University of Utah Intermountain Healthcare Population Health Student Scholars Program at the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine.

• Provide tuition support for medical students accepted into the program. There will be 10 students in the entering class of 2021 and 2022 and 25 students in each entering class thereafter.

• Provide an opportunity for the university to seek legislative and accreditation approvals to increase the number of medical students in each class.

• Support development of a population health medical education curriculum that will serve as a model for the nation.

• Create three endowed professorships—the Intermountain Population Health Sciences Professors, and four Intermountain Population Health Endowed Chairs—in the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine.

Through this innovative model, Utahns will benefit from the expertise of population health-minded physicians. After physician scholars graduate and subsequently complete their residency training—which is often carried out elsewhere in the country—they are committed to returning as a practitioner at Intermountain Healthcare or a partner organization in a population health discipline, including: family medicine, general surgery, internal medicine, obstetrics/gynecology, pediatrics, psychiatry, and others.