“We need to keep in mind that the end goal of the AHD is improved health in the community.” - Lee Bell, Chair, Community-Based Organization Partners; Project Coordinator, Youth Violence Prevention Center, Flint, MI

An Academic Health Department (AHD) is an organized partnership between schools of public health (SPH) and health departments creating a dynamic academic-practice collaboration, which effectively pools assets of both institutions.  The creation of AHDs maximizes resources and strengthens the important connection between academia and practice. 

Partnerships between the SPH and their state and/or local health departments prepare the workforce to address the front-line public health needs of the community and broaden students’ vision of professional employment opportunities.  The expertise of the health department can offer innumerable opportunities for the SPH to investigate best practices, issues in health administration, policies, etc., and how SPH can improve the systems of the health departments’ service delivery through its analytic and evaluation capacities.  Examples of the individual AHD project activities include:

• Creating paid internships at the health departments;
• Engaging local health department staff in academic training;
• Developing model curriculum;
• Conducting qualitative interviews with SPH faculty and health department staff to identify facilitators and barriers to effective collaboration;
• Enhancing partnerships;
• Planning faculty exchanges and forums addressing emerging issues;
• Developing a new website for the SPH and Health Department to submit requests for internships, research assistance, etc.; and,
• Offering “mini” grants for collaborative research projects.

The 2003 Institute of Medicine (IOM) reports Who Will Keep the Public Healthy? and The Future of the Public’s Health in the 21st Century  acknowledge much progress in collaboration between state and local public health agencies and SPH.  However, these recent reports also criticize the fact that integration of efforts in service, teaching and research is not as institutionalized as it needs. To add to the widely published concern that a low percentage of state and local health department employees have formal training in public health, a parallel situation exists in SPH where many faculty have degrees in fields other than public health and/or have little or no actual experience in the practice of public health.  The collaboration between the SPH and health departments addresses the challenges of workforce development weaknesses and provides for lifelong learning to address the front-line public health needs of the community. 

"Collaborating on this effort makes sense for [our health department] and our partners at the college.  It fits well with the health department's efforts to enhance our culture as a learning organization and to provide information and make decisions that are science-based." - State Health Department Director