Population Health Leaders in Academic Medicine Working Group (PHLAM) – IAPHS – Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science

Mission Statement

Population Health Leaders in Academic Medicine (PHLAM) brings together leaders of academic population health entities (e.g., departments, schools, colleges) to provide a platform for strengthening and sustaining the growing field of population health science. Though members of PHLAM share many interests and challenges with leaders in schools of public health, PHLAM’s principal vantage point is that of academic medicine. Read more

Membership
PHLAM membership is open to Chairs of Departments of Population Health (or analogous positions) within Schools of Medicine, as well as to Deans of Colleges and Schools of Population Health within academic medical centers.

Mission
PHLAM’s mission is to be a valued resource for the development and success of advances in the field of population health by groups based within academic medicine.

Vision
Over the next 10 years, PHLAM will continue to grow as the number of Departments, Colleges and Schools of Population Health propagate. PHLAM will bring together leaders of population health entities and to assess their needs and develop strategies for increasing the contribution and importance of population health in academic medicine and in policy decisions. While PHLAM will address components of population health management, our primary focus accompanies many other domains including (but not limited to) social determinants of health, community based interventions, health equity, and health systems operations. PHLAM will help members develop and sustain strong entities of population health and will lead the dissemination of content related to population health within academic journals and at conferences (e.g., AAMC, IAPHS).

Leadership
PHLAM is led by a trio of population health leaders in the style of president, president elect, and past president. They meet monthly to discuss the needs of population health and PHLAM, lead quarterly meetings, and plan the annual meeting.

Operations
PHLAM holds quarterly one-hour meetings to discuss current topics relevant to its members. PHLAM also convenes a daylong meeting as a pre-conference at the annual meeting of IAPHS (Interdisciplinary Association of Population Health Sciences). Additionally, PHLAM strives to have ~2 workgroups diving into important issues confronting leaders in population health. These workgroups differ across years, determined by need and interest. In addition to addressing these issues, PHLAM strives to disseminate information derived from the workgroups via journal publications.

Funding
PHLAM is funded by a proportion of institutional memberships to IAPHS contributed by members of PHLAM. This funding provides support for the effort of a project manager who works on PHLAM operations, and support from IAPHS in annual meeting planning and administrative tasks (e.g., scheduling meetings, maintenance of the listserv and website). As such, members of PHLAM are highly encouraged to join IAPHS as institutional members to help offset the cost of the administration of PHLAM.

Overview

The Population Health Leaders in Academic Medicine (PHLAM) Working Group seeks to bring together leaders of academic population health entities (e.g., departments, institutes) to provide a platform for strengthening and sustaining the growing field of population health science. Initially focusing on Academic population health entities within schools of medicine and population health, the group aims in the future to expand to academic units housed in schools and departments of public health, social science and related fields. PHLAM participants meet throughout the year on a quarterly basis.

The goals of the Working Group include:

Learning from peers about the nature of comparable efforts at other institutions;
Solving common challenges;
Establishing a typology of academic initiatives that articulates core features of interdisciplinary population health oriented programs; and
Providing peer mentoring for leadership development.

PHLAM is co-led by Dr. Sameer Vohra, Chair of Southern Illinois University School of Medicine’s Department of Population Science and Policy, Dr. Angie Fagerlin, Professor and Chair, Department of Population Health Sciences, University of Utah School of Medicine, and Dr. Celette Sugg Skinner, Professor and Inaugural Chair of the Department of Population and Data Sciences at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

Fourth Annual PHLAM Meeting

The Population Health Leaders in Academic Medicine (PHLAM) Working Group’s 4th Annual Meeting will convene on September 20, 2022. More details are coming soon!

Who Should Register for the PHLAM Annual Meeting?

The PHLAM Working Group is open to the leaders of academic entities at schools of medicine and schools of population health that focus primarily on the field of population health. By “academic entities”, we mean departments, divisions, centers, and institutes. Meeting attendees should have an interest in learning more about shared opportunities and challenges in directing academic population health efforts at their institutions, including matters of organizational structure, intra-school relationships, research agendas, healthcare delivery system involvement, community engagement, institutional expectations, and educational initiatives.