Definition
The factor – Targeted Professional Education – involves three elements:
- Educating new professionals for collaboration between public health and primary care,
- Continuous professional development for collaboration between public health and primary care,
- Education accreditation standards that include collaboration.
Professional education needs to include these elements with applied practice to develop the competencies to support intersectoral public health-primary care collaboration.
Interprofessional Education
The Accreditation of Interprofessional Health Education (AIPHE) explains that interprofessional education (IPE) is a “process by which we train individuals and teams to practice collaboratively.” IPE is commonly defined “when two or more professions learn with, from and about each other to improve collaboration and the quality of care.” (2011, p.4) This concept can be applied when considering public health and primary care professional education targeted at collaboration.
To explore more information on these initiatives, visit: CICH
Health Canada funded Phase one (2008) and Phase two (2010) of an initiative that brought together eight accreditation organizations from six professions: medicine, 
nursing, pharmacy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and social work.
Guiding Principles
In the first phase of this Accreditation of Interprofessional Health Education (AIPHE) initiative, guiding principles were identified to inform the development of standards, criteria, and evaluation/assessment methods as they relate to accreditation of interprofessional education in each profession that is part of AIPHE. The following are a selection of the guiding principles:
- Interprofssional education is an integral component of education for all health and human service professions when integrated explicitly into academic, practice or clinical contexts for learning;
- Interprofessional education embraces a relationship-centred approach;
- Interprofessional education requires active engagement of students across the professions in meaningful and relevant collaboration;
- Emerging evidence is used to guide interprofessional education;
- Required support structures for interprofessional education should be considered in all aspects of accreditation including institutional commitment, curriculum, resources, program evaluation, faculty, and students;
- Collaborative learning is integrated along the continuum of health professional education;
- Specific knowledge, skills, and attitudes are required for effective interprofessional collaboration.
For full reference, visit the Accreditation of Interprofessional Health Education (AIPHE) web site.
Listen to a group of public health and primary care professionals discussing what should be included in a curriculum to develop competencies that would be helpful in an education program targeted at the intersectoral public health-primary care collaborative processes.