Partnerships for Training, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), developed eight regional education systems to increase the number of primary care providers in federally designated Medically Underserved Areas of the United States.

These regional university-community partnerships that used distance education (e.g., Web- and interactive video-based courses) to educate nurse practitioner, certified nurse-midwife and physician assistant students in underserved areas.

Key Results

• The eight grantee organizations represented 13 states, 38 academic institutions and one other educational partner, and 74 community partners.
• They enrolled 1,140 nurse practitioner, certified nurse-midwife and physician assistant students from underserved areas and graduated 754 students (as of June 2003). It was expected that the remaining students would graduate by 2005.
• Faculty developed 109 distance-based (primarily Web-based) courses, of which at least 37 were interdisciplinary.
• Some 46 academic institutions and other program participants developed the capacity to train nurse practitioners, certified nurse-midwives and physician assistants from a distance, primarily using online education.
• The assessment conducted by the national program office found that 90 percent of Partnerships for Training graduates were practicing in medically underserved areas and if distance education were not available, 70 percent of the Partnerships for Training students would probably not have enrolled in their programs.
• National program office staff at the Association of Academic Health Centers in Washington created two Web-based resources, Building a Practice in Your Home Community, to help graduates start a practice in underserved communities and REACH (Resources & Education for Academic Community-based Healthcare), for health professions educators (neither Web resource is still active).
• In addition, the national program office created a model for development and portal for the sharing of "learning objects" among health professions faculty.
  
  The learning objects are stand-alone, student-centered, interactive learning experiences that target individual learning objectives.
• The academic institutions participating in seven of the eight sites continued to provide distance education to nurse practitioner, certified nurse-midwife, or physician assistant students, and many expanded their focus to include other health professionals and create additional programs.

See the Project List to link to reports on the projects and evaluation.