Interdisciplinary Family Health

Interdisciplinary Family Health (IFH) emerged in 1999 from a grassroots effort of a small group of faculty and students from the Colleges of Medicine, Pharmacy, and Nursing. Working with a small grant from the Pew Foundation and subsequent grants from the Community-Campus Partnerships for Health and the Arnold Gold Foundation, several pilot programs were developed that included 27 students and 9 faculty from the three colleges, in a course originally known as Keeping Families Healthy. In 2000 a large grant from the Merck Foundation allowed expansion to all first-year students in the three colleges, and the program received institutional support and a name change to IFH, adding additional students from the Colleges of Dentistry and Public Health and Health Professions. The course is constructed around the shared mission of collaborative training, discussion meetings and home visits with volunteer community families. The program’s initial learning objectives were focused on core curriculum areas that exist in most healthcare disciplines: interviewing skills, family systems, access to health care, community resources, and preventive medicine. Expansion of the course allowed the introduction to content areas such as teamwork and teambuilding, cultural issues in health care and patient safety. The course in 2011-12 includes 617 students, 125 faculty and over 210 local volunteer families and lasts one academic year. A history of the course and the Office can be found here (Academic Medicine Vol 80 No 4 April 2005).

The POST: The Dream Team -
The Interdisciplinary Health Course, one example of how UF is training health science students to work together… http://post.health.ufl.edu/the-post-february-2011/

COM Insider: College of Medicine students, faculty and staff give back – http://news.medinfo.ufl.edu/articles/staff/college-of-medicine-students-faculty-and-staff-give-back/

IFH Core Faculty:

College of Medicine:

Richard A. Davidson, MD,MPH
Associate Vice President for Health Affairs- Interprofessional Education
Distinguished Teaching Professor
Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology and Health Policy
Office of the Senior Vice President for Health Affairs
Phone 352-273-5322
Fax 352-273-5342
Richard.Davidson@medicine.ufl.edu