Health Resources and Services Administration

The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) has sponsored the Council on Linkages Between Academia and Public Health Practice for the past five years. This represents a major linkage activity that brings together national leaders in academe and practice, in an attempt to create and foster collaborative activities throughout the United States.

In FY 97, HRSA’s Bureau of Health Professions awarded $2.5 million for support of community-academic partnerships to improve the competencies and skills of the public health workforce.

These awards, which bring to 47 the total number of grants and cooperative agreements supported by HRSA’s Special Projects Program, reflect a maturing effort to strengthen the practice content of the curriculum for public health graduate students. In addition, the grants reflect a recognition of the emergence of distance-based learning as an effective and efficient method of meeting the practice community’s need for continuing education and the identification of new areas of importance in the practice of public health and in public health education (e.g., managed care, population-based community health and domestic violence).

The multi-year grant awards represent a total of 16 projects given to 14 schools of public health in 12 states. They include:

• Columbia University (2 awards) - $316,278
• Emory University - $175,889
• Harvard University - $162,000
• Saint Louis University - $150,478
• The University of Alabama at Birmingham - $154,056
• The University of California at Berkeley - $152,249
• The University of California at Los Angeles - $159,149
• University of Illinois at Chicago (2 awards) - $321,922
• University of Michigan - $148,730
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill - $158,536
• University of Oklahoma - $109,184
• University of South Florida - $153,346
• San Diego State University - $171,762
• Yale University - $156,696

For information concerning the HRSA Public Health Special Projects Program, or the projects listed above, contact Ronald B. Merrill, (301) 443-1164 or e-mail: rmerrill@hrsa.dhhs.gov.