The major aim of this award is to increase physician trainees' commitment and sensitivity to preventive cardiology with a focus on approaches likely to be effective in minority, particularly black, populations, and to address within these programs issues related to the specific needs of Alabama's black population. At the same time the integration of preventive cardiology concepts into the undergraduate and graduate medical education curricula will be promoted. The University and Medical Center have a rich tradition of preventive medicine research and services, and the methodology for accomplishing the above aims will be to integrate and focus the various activities and resources in order to forge a preventive cardiology identity within the institution and its training programs. The specific objectives to be accomplished are 1) to review currently available preventive cardiology curriculum materials and modify them as needed to reflect a culturally sensitive approach to preventive cardiology; 2) to effectively apply appropriate and valid principles of medical school curriculum change to promote increased emphasis on the essential concepts related to the prevention of cardiovascular disease; 3) to increase the amount of training devoted to preventive cardiology in housestaff training programs; and 4) to apply principles and technology of primary and secondary preventive intervention in a coordinated fashion through a preventive cardiology clinic; 5) to develop professional skills (research, teaching and patient care) that will enable the Candidate to function as a highly effective academic clinician. The award will provide a logical extension of the Candidate's previous research on the health care seeking behavior of blacks. Preliminary data from this research indicate that physicians may be unaware of, or hold misconceptions about, the opportunities for preventive cardiology in the black population. The proposed program will develop materials that can be used at other institutions and will directly address this problem among the trainees at this institution.
