The federal government has paused indefinitely all funding for preventative medicine residency training. This means medical students who have matched into PM cannot be on-boarded and will not be able to start residency this year. Those already in residency will now be expected to pay for their own MPH program (which is a requirement for board certification).
The Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA) Preventive Medicine Residency grant program is vital to the specialty, responsible for training approximately half of the graduating PH/GPM physicians in 2025. Suspending this funding risks not only the future of the preventive medicine workforce, but also the very goals set forth in efforts to improve preventive care and delivery under the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) vision. If the goal is to incentivize wellness and keep people out of the hospital, then U.S. graduate medical education efforts should be similarly focused on preventive medicine.
So, I know this will be sort of a hot take, but I’m ok with Preventive Medicine as a residency being eliminated.
The doctors I’ve known who were boarded in Preventive Medicine were, to be blunt, deficient in clinical skills. As in couldn’t read EKGs because they hadn’t been taught that…so didn’t order EKGs when they were clinically indicated. As in kept educating on diet and exercise year after year in patients with clearly genetic hyperlipidemia instead of prescribing statins. As in missed actual cases of Hep B and Hep C that needed treatment, because they were intent on preventing Hep B and C.
Because basically, when you DON’T have a hammer, you will convince yourself that nothing looks like a nail. And Preventive Medicine has a reputation as being a residency that attracts medical students who find out during their rotations that they don’t like sick people (or that sick people make them anxious.)
On the other hand, completing a normal residency and THEN going and getting an MPH? I’m in total support of that.