A new report published in a special supplemental issue of the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice focusing on HRSA’s Investment in Public Health describes trends in both the number of board-certified preventive medicine physicians and those physicians who self-designate preventive medicine as a primary or secondary specialty and examines the age, gender distribution, and geographic distribution of this workforce. In “The Supply and Distribution of the Preventive Medicine Physician Workforce,” Dr. Thomas C. Ricketts and colleagues explain that the number of preventive medicine physicians is not likely to match population needs in the United States in the near term and beyond. Assessing the preventive medicine physician workforce in the United States is complicated by difficulties in defining the specialty and because less than half of self-designated preventive medicine physicians hold a board certification in the specialty.

The infographic below provides a convenient summary of the article for practitioners and policy makers. To read the article for FREE in the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, visit our website here: https://bit.ly/3wnMSJm. Download a PDF of the infographic here: Preventive Medicine Physician Workforce Supply & Distribution or click the image below.

Learn More:

• HRSA’s Investment in Public Health

Thomas C. Ricketts, III, PhD, MPH

Thomas C. Ricketts, III, PhD, MPH, is Senior Policy Fellow in the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research, Adjunct Professor of Health Policy and Management and Social Medicine at the UNC-Gillings School of Global Public Health and the UNC School of Medicine, and Professeur Associé of the École des Hautes Études en Santé Publique of Paris and Rennes, France. He is a Board member of the NC Foundation for Health Leadership and Innovation. He previously founded and directed the North Carolina Rural Health Research Center (1988-2000) and the Southeastern Health Workforce Research Center (2003-2009). He was appointed a member of the National Health Care Workforce Commission in 2010. He is a consultant to the American College of Surgeons on workforce issues and access to surgery. Dr. Ricketts was Editor of the North Carolina Medical Journal between 2006 and 2012 having previously served as Editor of the Journal of Rural Health from 1990 until 1996. In 2014 he completed a special assignment as adviser to the Administrator of HRSA helping reorganize its structure. He teaches population health and research methods in the UNC Doctoral Program of Public Health Leadership and writes and lectures about US health policy making.