) The CATCHUM program, a consortium of the eight Texas Medical Schools, is dedicated to ensuring that every medical student in Texas has the opportunity to learn what is necessary to effectively prevent, detect and control cancer. With pilot funding from the Texas Cancer Council in 1993, the Texas medical schools began to address serious curriculum deficiencies, lack of interested faculty, and few clinical learning opportunities in cancer prevention, detection and control. A steering committee of institutional representatives surveyed some curricular offerings, identified key faculty, developed a comprehensive set of core competencies to guide student learning, and disseminated learning resources. In 1995, these efforts were sustained with the award of a National Cancer Institute training grant which has produced the only statewide medical education consortium devoted to ensuring that every medical student in Texas has the opportunity to learn to identify cancer risks, to perform clinical detection, and to modify risk through surveillance and patient counseling. The NCI funding has made it possible for all schools to increase the required curricular hours in cancer prevention education (ranging from 19 hours to 58 hours), all have a cancer education coordinator, all have cancer education committees, all expose students to required and elective courses that address core cancer prevention and control competencies, and all have clinical rotations in which cancer prevention and control knowledge and skills are integrated into the encounters. There are now 50 faculty """"""""champions,""""""""who are actively involved in CATCHUM activities by developing instructional resources, sharing expertise, and leading curricular changes in their local institutions to enhance and increase cancer prevention, detection and control education. The UTMB Educational Cancer Center provides an Internet homepage at (http://snapper.utmb.edu.800/ccenter) to enhance dissemination of CATCHUM developed educational resources. Continued funding of the CATCHUM project will sustain progress toward longitudinally integrated curricula, performance-based education and competency-based testing, increase clinical education in community and ambulatory settings, faculty development, and provide the momentum to secure permanent state funding for the CATCHUM Project.
| Eldredge, Jonathan D (2002) La Biblioteca Medica Nacional: The National Medical Library of Cuba. J Med Libr Assoc 90:246-8 |
