California Oregon Medical Partnership to Address Disparities in Rural Education and Health

 

Our vision is to strengthen the medical workforce and reduce health disparities among urban, rural, and tribal communities by reimagining residency and leveraging a powerful regional coalition.

 

What is COMPADRE?

COMPADRE is a robust collaboration between UC Davis and OHSU medical schools and over 30  graduate medical education (GME) programs across 10 health care systems throughout northern California and Oregon. 

COMPADRE emerged out of our concern to address persistent physician shortages in underserved urban, rural, and tribal communities that result in health disparities due to community members’ limited access to adequate health care. COMPADRE aims to transform the physician workforce by training physicians who are better prepared, more equitably distributed across the region, and who are deeply connected to underserved communities.  As an AMA Reimagining Residency Initiative, we see the importance of strategically collaborating among medical schools, local health care systems, GME programs, and community partners to develop robust pathways from medical school to independent clinical practice.

For more information about the AMA Reimagining Residency project and the ACE initiative, please visit http://changemeded.org.

Click image to enlarge. Data Source: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation County Health Rankings: http://www.countyhealthrankings.org/

Click image to enlarge. Data Source: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation County Health Rankings: http://www.countyhealthrankings.org/

 

COMPADRE: Regionally-Focused Medical Education in California and Oregon

Our Mission

To reach our long-term mission of enhancing community health, COMPADRE seeks to achieve the following:

  1. Innovate admissions practices into UME and GME to transform the composition and distribution of the physician workforce.

  2. Redesign the UME to GME transition so students gain first-hand experience in their future clinical learning environments.

  3. Redesign curriculum to foster new clinical, health system science, and advocacy skills among learners which will better prepare them to care for populations in under-resourced settings.

  4. Enhance wellbeing and joy in practice by nurturing meaningful longitudinal relationships within a thriving learning community.

  5. Reduce regional health disparities.

Our Current Efforts

We are currently focused on connecting mission driven students to like-minded GME programs to ultimately train more physicians to practice in underserved settings in Northern California and Oregon. This includes: 

  1. Connect UME to GME: Building robust, earlier, and more frequent opportunities for medical students to rotate and network with residency programs. This includes opportunities in the pre-matriculation and pre-clerkship phases of medical school.

  2. COMPADRE Community of Practice : nurturing a thriving learning community through monthly virtual meetings with COMPADRE UME, GME, and community-based partners that includes: 

    >>>> Educator Development with CME trainings

    >>>> Peer support training and wellness curriculum

    >>>> Resource sharing and curriculum highlights

    >>>> Opportunities for scholarly activities

  3. COMPADRE Annual In-Person meeting: an opportunity to connect with other like-minded individuals, brainstorm solutions to navigate the current challenges, and celebrate our collective progress. 

Check out our open-access Canvas pages, which link resources for Educator Development, Curriculum, and Wellness.