Physician Training Award in Cancer Prevention

The Preventive Medicine -Public Health residency program at the University of Kentucky's Colleges of Medicine and Public Health trains physicians to assess the health of populations, and to address health-related disparities through the design and implementation of public health interventions. Preventive Medicine physicians use their skills and knowledge to reduce the risk of disease, disability and death in a variety of ways. Their work may include collecting health-related data, analyzing it, and making evidence-based recommendations for changes in policies or laws in order to improve the overall population health. Because approximately 21,000 Kentuckians are diagnosed with cancer each year, and some 9,000 die from this disease, the University of Kentucky Preventive Medicine -Public Health residency program is developing a track specializing in cancer prevention and control. This program will train two phYSicians every two years. Cancer Track physicians will enter the program after they have had a minimum of one year of clinical training. They will then spend the next two years in public health classes and in various practical experiences related to improving the health of populations and of individual patients. After taking classes in statistics, epidemiology, health behavior, environmental health and health services management, the residents will take special classes related to cancer prevention and control -such as cancer epidemiology. Completion of the public health course work will provide these physicians with an MPH degree to add to their medical degree (MD or DO). The residents will gain practical skills and knowledge in a variety of settings, such as the university-based cancer center and the state health department. During their two-year training, residents will work directly with cancer patients to understand how the disease affects them and their families; they will assist local chapters of the American Cancer Society in improving outcomes for patients; they will analyze data from cancer registries and make recommendations; they will complete projects for managers in cancer prevention and control projects so as to better understand how these programs operate and can be improved; and they will interact with researchers and community groups where a community-based participative research approach is being used to implement cancer prevention and control. Finally, they will create an original research manuscript based on an analysis of a subset of data from a cancer data repository.