AMA Announces $10M Physician-training Initiative

CHICAGO — The American Medical Assoc. (AMA) recently announced a $10 million competitive grant initiative to attract bold, innovative projects to transform the way medical schools train future physicians. To showcase the major new initiative, the AMA joined with medical students, medicalschool administrators, and faculty on six campuses across the nation.

“Rapid changes in health care require a transformation in the way we train future physicians,” said AMA President Dr. Jeremy Lazarus. “The AMA is deeply committed to redesigning undergraduate medical education to prepare the medical students of today for the healthcare of tomorrow.”

Across the continuum of medical education, the gap between how physicians are trained and the future needs of healthcare continues to widen. The AMA is seeking to attract and support bold, rigorously evaluated innovations that align medical student training with the evolving needs of patients, communities, and the changing healthcare environment.

As part of the “Accelerating Change in Medical Education” initiative, the AMA will provide $10 million over the next five years to fund eight to 10 projects that support a significant redesign of undergraduate medical education. Specifically, funding will be awarded to medical schools for:

• Developing new methods for teaching and/or assessing key competencies for medical students and fostering methods to create more flexible, individualized learning plans;
• Promoting exemplary methods to achieve patient safety, performance improvement, and patient-centered, team-based care, and improving understanding of the healthcare system and healthcare financing in medical training; and
• Enhancing development of professionalism throughout the medical-education learning environment.

From the initial pool of proposals, the AMA will invite a select group of medical schools to submit a full proposal by May 15 and will conduct a thorough review of all materials before announcing the selected schools at its annual meeting in June.

For more information about the initiative, visit www.changemeded.org.