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Second Annual Report to the Secretary Department of Health and Human Services and to the Congress, Review and Recommendations > Interdisciplinary, Community-Based Linkages, Title VII, Part D Public Health Service Act
 
Executive Summary

I. Introduction
II. Grant Program Characteristics
III. First Report: Summary of Recommendations
IV. Recommendations for Statutory Change
V. Strategic Recommendations for the Present Action and Future Considerations
VI. The Advisory Committee's Future Agenda
VII. Advisory Committee Members and Staff
Appendix A. Findings from the FY 2001 Annual Report

Appendix B. FY 2002 Meeting Agendas

 

III. First Report: Summary of Recommendations

In its first year of operation, the Advisory Committee devoted the bulk of its effort toward developing a comprehensive understanding of the scope of the Title VII, Part D programs, their operational characteristics, and their outcomes. Conducted in what the Committee termed its "foundation" period, the Committee arrived at a series of findings and recommendations set forth in its First Report, issued in November 2001. The report contained seven major findings and ten specific recommendations (See Appendix A). The full set of recommendations presented in the First Report is briefly summarized below:

Recommendations of a legislative nature:

  • Because of their clearly effective approach to building a workforce that provides health care services to unserved, underserved, and/or vulnerable populations, Federal interdisciplinary, community-based grant programs should be reauthorized.

  • Appropriations for programs of this nature should be increased.

  • Future legislation should encourage collaborations between these grant programs and institutions that train minority and immigrant populations.

  • Future legislation should also encourage the design and implementation of funded activities relating directly to the unique health needs of a given region or area.

  • Congress should establish a grant program ("Interdisciplinary Education Demonstration Projects") to encourage cooperative community-based ventures between two or more of the programs currently described in Sections 751-755 of the Act. New appropriations should be authorized for this new initiative.

  • Owing to the unique nature of the target populations and economic areas served by Health Education and Training Centers (HETCs), the legislative cost-sharing requirement for such entities should be restated as a desire, not a requirement.

  • The legislative authority for podiatric medicine grants, currently contained in Section 755 of the Act, should be relocated in Section 747 in association with discipline-specific grants to train family physicians, general internal physicians, and other primary health care providers.

Recommendations of an administrative nature:

  • Administrative policies should be established that promote the utilization of community advisory groups by grantees as well as training protocols uniquely defined for the local service area or population.

  • The administrative policy tools of "preferences and priorities" should be used to make awards to grantees that truly propose training of an interdisciplinary nature.

  • The Committee endorses the 1995 recommendation of the National Commission on Allied Health that there be established within the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) an organizational entity that would give greater visibility and representation to allied health.

  • Federal agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Food and Drug Administration should establish formal, funding-based links with HRSA to enable the entities described in Sections 751-755 to carry out continuing professional education and other forms of postgraduate training that could serve to translate research into practice.

  • Federal agencies that seek to promote more "population inclusive" research should be instructed to establish funding relationships with the entities described in Sections 751755.

  • Federal criteria for cost sharing with State or local governments and private foundations should be maintained for programs that have demonstrated successful outcomes but not, as noted earlier, for Health Education and Training Centers (HETCs), because of the unique nature of their target populations and economic areas served.