A new 2-page report highlights strategic progress to date and previews our new signature initiatives as we enter “Stage 2” of our strategic work 

In the summer of 2022, the Center for Interprofessional Education launched a new strategic blueprint that would guide our work for the next 18 months. Known as the “Next Phase” Strategic Blueprint, it outlined key initiatives centered around a single goal: Innovating and Implementing IPE at U-M to improve the quintuple aims of health.

The work undertaken since that time has been broad and diverse, covering eight initiatives across different committees and workgroups. This work involved over 70 faculty, staff and students who spend time exploring new areas and learning how interprofessional education and practice can be enhanced at U-M and Michigan Medicine. Through this work, C-IPE focused on understanding where we could help and add the most value.

As C-IPE moves into “Stage 2” of our strategic work, we are providing an update on our progress to date along with a look at what lies ahead. A summary of key progress by each of our eight areas of work is highlighted in this 2-page update. Some highlights include:

• Launch of Interprofessional Community Health Collaborative (ICHC), including 5 community health events to date.
• Development of an IPE Instructor Report to showcase IPE efforts and experiences related to teaching, which often go unseen because many aren’t courses. 
• Launch of the “discussion group” consisting of administrative leaders from the Office of Patient Experience, Office for Health Equity and Inclusion, Office of Well-being and Quality/Safety Department to develop a shared vision.

C-IPE hosted a strategic retreat in December 2023 to explore what Stage 2 of our work should include. 

We determined that the next stage of strategic work should focus on building better teams both “upstream” and “downstream.” The upstream work is what we’d been doing with students already, with deliberate attention focused on their development of IPE competencies in different environments. The downstream work will focus on work in the settings where care is delivered — where our students’ learning is most impacted.

We also defined four key stakeholder groups that are critically important to our mission. Those groups include:

• Educators and practitioners: We have always been focused on our educators, but are recognizing that our practitioners are also centrally important for our student’s learning in the practice environment. We are developing scalable interprofessional education and training for both these groups.
• Learners: We will continue to focus on our learners and are excited to work with their programs to tailor offerings through the implementation of our core curriculum.
• Patients and communities: In addition to our patients, we are focusing on the communities in which our patients live and will use an interprofessional approach as we partner and bring public health and social determinant aspects to these settings.
• Systems that improve health: Our students experience impactful learning in these environments, but often feel like their classroom learning doesn’t match up with “real life.” We are striving to make their learning experiences real everywhere that their interprofessional identities are forged.

As C-IPE evolves to become a driver of high-quality team-based practice, optimizing the environments where our students learn, five signature initiatives will drive Stage 2. Those include:

• Implement and scale the core curriculum: Having agreed-upon and endorsed the core curriculum, we now must implement and scale it across our 24 programs. 
• Focused innovation on community health, research, pre-health learners and systems transformation: We are focusing our innovation efforts on those areas most vital to our mission.
• Enhanced visibility of educator and learner development through reports and certification: By making this work more visible, we hope it will become more valued, supported and provide a pathway for future opportunities.
• Launch of the “stadium” of IPE community of practice and scholars: We plan to grow our movement significantly, and will be bringing our growing groups together regularly to learn, share best practices, troubleshoot challenges and support each other on this journey. 
• Governance that reflects all of our stakeholders and key partners: This will help us all work successfully together while allowing us to be our most productive as a team.

We are excited to launch Stage 2 later in 2024. Stay tuned for more information and make sure to review our 2-page summary.