Community based Education Initiatives

The Mini-Med School is an award-winning 8 week lecture-based course open free to the community, which serves as one way to thank the community for the tax support that comprises less than 10% of the school's budget. It is now broadcast live to five outlying sites in Colorado via satellite. Rural audiences are able to participate in the question and answer sessions at the end of each lecture. The School supports tele-education outreach for several outlying communities. Grand Rounds are delivered via interactive video to remote sites throughout Colorado. This effort will be enhanced by recent installation of a new network bridge, which will allow the campus to deliver these educational conferences to multiple sites simultaneously providing access to health professionals, students and the public.

The Programs in Public Psychiatry interface with the state's Mental Health Institutes in Pueblo and Fort Logan, where psychiatrists perform medical student education, research and collaborative functions as well as clinical roles. Another collaborative program with the Colorado Division of Youth Services provides special services to the severely mentally ill youth. Its scope is expanding to bring effective mental health services to severely mentally ill juvenile offenders who have gotten into trouble with crime. Another component of the Public Psychiatry programs attends to the diagnosis, treatment, training and research for persons with developmental disabilities and mental health needs. Traveling behavioral pharmacology clinics are provided throughout Colorado.

The Healthy Nations Initiative, launched with funding from the RWJ Foundation, provides financial support, programmatic supervision and technical assistance to 14 American Indian and Alaska Native communities, the purpose of which is to facilitate their efforts to reduce the harm due to substance abuse. Local strategies emphasize public awareness and education, early identification and referral, enhancing inpatient and outpatient treatment options, and prevention. A related program maintains a web site that provides current information with respect to exemplary programs in mental health, substance abuse, aging services, individual and organizational sources of program expertise, discussion groups and bibliographic resources for American Indians and Alaska Native populations. The Colorado AHEC system is a partnership between the CU Health Sciences Center and five community-based area health education centers in Colorado. The program links CU's academic resources with local educational, clinical and planning resources to provide educational services to students, faculty and health care practitioners throughout the state and particularly in rural Colorado.

The Colorado AIDS Education and Training Center educates primary health care providers about HIV infection, including prevention, diagnosis, treatment and psychosocial issues. Since April 1988, more than 80% of its 500 educational programs for 15,000 health care professionals were conducted outside the Denver metropolitan area. Hence, the School of Medicine helps fulfill its mission of educating health care professionals, sharing their expertise with peers, providing clinical training and serving as a resource for the treatment and care issues of HIV-infected clients.

In order to facilitate communication with rural and underserved areas of the state, the deans of the CU Schools of Medicine and Nursing, the President of University Hospital and director of the Colorado AHEC system have completed nearly 100 outreach tours to meet with key health care providers, local and state policy makers and others to stay in touch with educational, research and service needs of communities throughout Colorado. These visits allow for enhanced dialogue between community leaders and CU Health Sciences Center officials about critical issues such as increasing primary care providers across Colorado. Several programs have been created as a result of these tours, including the addition of an outreach librarian to help facilitate electronic access to the latest medical journals in our library.

Collaborative Partnerships Through the School's Perinatal/Pediatric Outreach Education Program, obstetrical, neonatal and pediatric experts from The Children's Hospital, University Hospital and the CU Health Sciences Center have joined forces in a collaborative effort to enhance maternal/child health care. This program's goal is to encourage optimal health care for pregnant women, newborns, children and their families across the state. Outreach visits are scheduled throughout the Rocky Mountain region for case review and consultation on perinatal and pediatric issues for local medical staff and/or entire perinatal/pediatric committees. Traineeships, such as the Rural Pediatric Nursing Traineeship Program, provide small groups of professionals with an in-depth focus on the anticipation, recognition, assessment and stabilization of the pregnant woman, newborn and pediatric client. Local and regional physicians also can spend time at The Children's Hospital and affiliated institution for continuing professional development through the MD Visiting Fellowship Program.

The School's program of prenatal and infancy home visitation for low-income women bearing first children is aimed at improving the outcomes of pregnancy by helping women reduce their use of harmful substances, such as tobacco, alcohol, and illegal drugs and by helping women identify and obtain care for emerging obstetric complications before they become more serious. Also, it is designed to improve the health and development of the child by helping parents provide more responsible and competent care of the infant. It helps parents improve their own personal development by helping women develop a vision for their future and plan future pregnancies, finish their education, and find work. In a series of three randomized trials conducted over the past 20 years, the program has been tested using nurses as home visitors in the first two trials and is being tested in a third trial that compares nurses with lay community health visitors. Results from the first two trials indicate that the program can improve maternal and child functioning in each of the realms listed above, including reducing the rates of cigarette smoking during pregnancy, the rates of pre-term delivery among women who smoked, and pregnancy-induced hypertension among African American women. Among Caucasian women enrolled in the first trial, nurse-visited low-income unmarried women had 80% fewer verified cases of child abuse and neglect during a 15-year period after delivery of the first child, 30 fewer months of welfare use, 44% fewer behavioral problems due to their use of substances and 69% fewer arrests. The School also operates a volunteer-based home visitation program for low-risk mothers, which has served over 1000 families since 1985.

The School and Denver Public Schools, together with its affiliated hospital partners The Children's Hospital and Denver Health support Denver School- Based Health Centers located in seven Denver high schools, three Denver middle schools, and three Denver elementary schools. These centers were designed by School faculty to increase access to primary health care for underserved children. The program also involves the family in counseling services and helps direct pregnant girls into prenatal care. This national model program provides technical assistance and resources to many programs throughout the country.