) It is estimated that approximately 50% of premature deaths in this country could be avoided if Americans practiced more preventive health habits. Reducing smoking and improving eating habits alone could reduce cancer incidence significantly. Despite these impressive data, most physicians remain ill-prepared to assess the health risks of their patients or to provide prevention counseling. The University of Arizona is no exception. Despite a Statement of Ideals adopted by the medical school faculty which strongly supports prevention education, medical students are not receiving the levels of education they need to effectively integrate prevention into practice. The investigators are proposing the development and evaluation of a comprehensive and integrated cancer prevention/health promotion curriculum in order to graduate medical students who have the attitudes, cognitive knowledge and skills required to effectively assess health risks of individuals and communities and provide appropriate and effective prevention prescriptions. The project will include systematic evaluation of the current curriculum for cancer prevention/health promotion content, development of prevention objectives, integration of prevention using effective teaching modalities, evaluation of all program components and establishment of mechanisms to assure continuation of the cancer prevention/health promotion curriculum beyond grant funding. A similar approach has been used at this institution in the development, integration and evaluation of the nutrition curriculum and has been shown to be highly effective in increasing nutrition content as well as student knowledge and perceptions of nutrition content in their medical education.
