Dennis Thombs, PhD, FAAHB is the Director of the DrPH program, Professor and Chair of the Department of Behavioral and Community Health, and Interim Dean (starting Sept 1st, 2015) for the UNTHSC School of Public Health. In addition to his many roles in the School of Public Health, he is a member of the advisory committee for the Department of Interprofessional Education and Practice (IPE/P) at UNTHSC. Dennis is truly invested in increasing our students’ exposure to interprofessional work, and he is proud of the progress our university has made:
“Compared to other academic health science centers, UNTHSC is far ahead in carrying out institution-level learning activities involving students from a wide range of professions, including medicine, pharmacy, nursing, physical therapy, physician assistant, public health, social work, speech language pathology, and others.”
Dennis has put a lot of thought into how public health students can join with biomedical research students and health care students in collaborative ways. Dennis sees interprofessional education as an avenue toward “increased respect for the work of all professions, students learning about the scope of practice of professions other than one’s own, and producing faculty and students that are prepared to participate in team-based practice and research.”
Recently, he provided a seminar for practicing professionals titled, “Upstream Thinking: Partnering Public Health and Clinical Professions.” It was a collaboration amongst the IPE/P department, a UNTHSC teaching physician, and TCU nursing and social work professors. Dennis hopes “that UNTHSC, TCU, and other regional partner universities will be recognized as leaders in IPE that emphasizes population health to train students and professionals to consider the upstream determinants of health problems in both clinical practice and the community.”