Preventive Medicine
Preventive Medicine and Public Health Careers
The majority of our Preventive Medicine Residency Program graduates hold leadership positions covering a wide array of preventive medicine and public health practices. Our training program provides a balance between the requisite core experiences for all preventive medicine and public health practitioners and individualized experiences that focus on each trainee’s unique goals and objectives. We offer flexibility in our curriculum to accommodate trainees who develop new career interests as they explore the myriad exciting possibilities in our specialty. The American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) and the American College of Preventive Medicine (ACPM) provide descriptions of career options in preventive medicine and public health. AAMC: A preventive medicine specialist focuses on the health of individuals and defined populations in order to protect, promote, and maintain health and well-being, and to prevent disease, disability, and premature death.
The distinctive components of preventive medicine include: 1) Biostatistics and the application of biostatistical principles and methodology; 2) Epidemiology and its application to population-based medicine and research; 3) Health services management and administration including: developing, assessing, and assuring health policies; planning, implementing, directing, budgeting, and evaluating population health and disease management programs; and utilizing legislative and regulatory processes to enhance health; 4) Control of environmental factors that may adversely affect health; 5) Control and prevention of occupational factors that may adversely affect health safety; 6) Clinical preventive medicine activities, including measures to promote health and prevent the occurrence, progression, and disabling effects of disease and injury; and 7) Assessment of social, cultural and behavioral influences on health. Practitioners work in many settings, including the armed forces, general and family practice, government, international health agencies, hospitals, health centers, health maintenance organizations and industry. They are heavily involved in influencing public policy, public health, and designing health care systems to prevent and control the spread of diseases.
A preventive medicine physician may be a specialist in general preventive medicine, public health, occupational medicine or aerospace medicine. This specialist works with large population groups as well as with individual patients to promote health and understand the risks of disease, injury, disability, and death, seeking to modify and eliminate these risks. ACPM: Preventive medicine is a specialty that bridges clinical practice and public health. Specialists work in diverse settings and tap into a broad skill set to prevent disease and promote the health of individuals, communities and populations. Physicians completing a preventive medicine residency gain a breadth of skills that open many potential career paths in population health system management, public health and epidemiology, clinical care, health informatics, public health policy development and much more. Preventive medicine physicians work in a variety of settings including state and local health departments, Fortune 100 companies, health systems and all levels of government.
Completion of residency training in preventive medicine is an essential step to become certified in one or more of the preventive medicine specialty areas: public health and general preventive medicine, occupational medicine, and aerospace medicine. There are currently 72 accredited preventive medicine residency training programs in the United States. Programs are administered by schools of medicine, schools of public health, state or local health departments, or in federal government agencies or branches of the uniformed services. They take an individualized approach to training, with approximately 350 residents in training every year. Residency program accreditation and ongoing compliance reviews are performed by the Preventive Medicine Residency Review Committee of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.
Examples of Public Health/Preventive Medicine Careers
UMass Chan Graduates: Careers
The majority of our UMass Chan Preventive Medicine Residency Graduates have leadership positions covering a wide array of Preventive Medicine and Public Health practices. Our training program provides a balance between the requisite core experiences for all preventive medicine and public health practitioners and individualized experiences that focus on each trainee’s unique goals and objectives. We maintain sufficient flexibility in our curriculum to accommodate trainees who develop new career interests as they explore the myriad exciting possibilities in our specialty.