VOLUME 32, NUMBER 7 THURSDAY, October 5, 2000
ReporterTop_Stories

UB to join in teaching plan
Initiative designed to train primary-care faculty in genetics

send this article to a friend

By LOIS BAKER
News Services Editor

The Department of Family Medicine is one of 20 university-based groups chosen by the federal Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to participate in a new faculty-development initiative called Genetics in Primary Care.

The department will receive a $10,000 grant to develop a multidisciplinary training program intended to train primary-care medical faculty in genetics. The new program is part of a $1.6 million project sponsored by several federal agencies and the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine.

"The Human Genome Project ushers in a whole new era of medicine, changing forever traditional primary health-care delivery," said Claude Earl Fox, administrator of the HRSA. "With this program, we will help physicians to begin thinking genetically so we can better serve millions of individuals and families who are waiting and hoping for new cures and treatments.

A study published in a recent issue of Genetics in Medicine found that fewer than 10 percent of health professionals surveyed were confident in their training in genetics issues.

David Newberger and Roberta Gebhard of the Department of Family Medicine are co-leaders of UB's Genetics in Primary Care project.

"The purpose of the project," said Newberger, "is to enable faculty from the disciplines of family medicine, general internal medicine and general pediatrics to incorporate information about medical genetics into their teaching interactions with medical students and primary-care residents."

Gebhard will lead a five-person core team composed of faculty members from internal medicine, pediatrics and biochemical genetics, in addition to family medicine. These faculty members will attend two national training sessions and will, in turn, train members of a 10-person extended faculty-development team.

The trained faculty will develop curriculum materials and present joint Primary Care Genetics Grand Rounds and a four-part workshop series of case-based genetics teaching sessions.

Information and experience from UB and the other participants in the Genetics in Primary Care initiative will be used to develop a nation-wide, long-term faculty-development plan for incorporating genetics into primary-care teaching and curriculum development.

Members of the core team, in addition to Gebhard, and their disciplines are Joseph DeJames-Maldonado, family medicine; Janet Sunquest, general internal medicine; Heather Kaufman, pediatrics, and Georgirene Vladutiu, biochemical genetics.

Members of the extended faculty-development team, in addition to Newberger, and their disciplines are Roseanne Berger, David Holmes, Judy Shipengrover and Martin Mahoney, family medicine; Manju Ceylony, general internal medicine; Gail Goodman, pediatrics, and Richard Erbe, Laurie Sadler and Luther Robinson, genetics

Front Page | Top Stories | Photos | Briefly | Q&A | Electronic Highways
Sports | Events | Current Issue | Comments?
Archives | Search | UB Home | UB News Services | UB Today