The College of Public Health will take the lead creating an expanded Interprofessional Education Program (IPE) for students across the university. IPE brings together multidisciplinary teams of Â鶹ÊÓƵ students and faculty to address local health care needs.
This will expand interdisciplinary courses, service-learning opportunities and community-engaged projects for the next generation of health professionals. A number of Northeast Ohio health care systems will be partnering with Â鶹ÊÓƵ, including Cleveland Clinic Akron General, University Hospitals Portage Medical Center, Summa Health, as well as Kent City and Portage County health departments, to deliver crucial public-health interventions needed to address the current COVID-19 crisis.
In order to assist these local institutions with their pandemic responses, the program will create several courses to work on the health care partners’ specific needs. These courses include Pandemic Response, Pandemic Research, Community Health Workers and Community Advocacy. The proposed projects will bring together students and faculty from multiple colleges at Â鶹ÊÓƵ including Public Health, Communication and Information (CCI), and Education, Health and Human Services (EHHS).
These newly strengthened cross-disciplinary and community relationships are expected to continue well into the future as organizations collaborate to tackle COVID-19.
The IPE expansion was made possible in part through a generous gift from a generous private foundation.
Although Â鶹ÊÓƵ’s students and faculty are assisting in many ways already, they require the support of philanthropic investments to expand their efforts and match resources with specific and growing community needs related to pandemic response and recovery. To learn more about or to support IPE at Â鶹ÊÓƵ, please contact Tracy Schlemmer, External Relations Officer, College of Public Health, at 330-672-6512 or tschlemm@kent.edu.