July 30, 2015 -- AMA, Chicago – Less than two years after the American Medical Association (AMA) launched its bold initiative to reshape medical education across the United States, the organization today announced that it will provide funding for up to 20 additional medical schools to join the AMA’s Accelerating Change in Medical Education Consortium and work toward a significant redesign of undergraduate medical education that better aligns with the 21st century health care system.
The consortium was created by the AMA in 2013 with an $11 million grant initiative to 11 of the country’s top medical schools. Each school received a $1 million grant over five years, and together they formed a dynamic consortium that is developing innovative curriculum models to help thousands of medical students better prepare for delivering care in the rapidly evolving health care landscape. The projects currently underwayPDF FIle encompass many educational innovations, including models for student immersion within the health care system from day one of medical school and competency-based models enabling students to advance through medical school based on their own individualized learning plans.
“In such a short amount of time, our consortium schools have made impressive strides toward creating the medical school of the future. Many of the schools have already implemented new curriculum models that are supporting innovative training for 7,000 medical students who will one day care for more than 12.2 million patients each year,” said AMA President Steven J. Stack, M.D. “It is because of this tremendous progress that we’ve decided to collaborate with more medical schools and continue on the path to spreading innovation across the entire medical education system to close the gaps that exist between the way physicians are educated and how health care will be delivered in the future.”
As part of this second phase of the Accelerating Change in Medical Education initiative, the AMA is calling on medical schools to build upon and implement the education models created by the 11 founding consortium schools, as well as offer unique projects that can be shared with medical schools nationwide. The AMA will provide $1.5 million over the next three years to fund up to 20 additional schools’ projects that support a significant redesign of undergraduate medical education. Interested medical schools must submit their proposals by Sept. 16 at http://www.changemeded.org/.
