April 3 Seminar at UAB to Address Creating New Models of Primary Care

Nationally, there is a decreasing supply of primary care physicians, nurses and other health care professionals, and with the coming retirement of the baby-boom generation the shortages likely will continue.

March 31, 2009

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Nationally, there is a decreasing supply of primary care physicians, nurses and other health care professionals, and with the coming retirement of the baby-boom generation the shortages likely will continue.

Edward O'Neil, Ph.D., M.P.A., from the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center, will discuss his research into new models for the delivery of primary care to help curb the shortages in a seminar Friday, April 3, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. in the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) School of Nursing Auditorium, 1701 University Blvd.

The seminar is co-sponsored by the UAB School of Nursing and the UAB Lister Hill Center for Health Policy.

O'Neil is a professor in the departments of family and community medicine, preventive and restorative dental sciences and social and behavioral sciences in the school of nursing at the University of California, San Francisco. He also is director of the Center for the Health Professions, a research, advocacy and training institute that he created to assist health care professionals, health professions schools, care delivery organizations and public policy makers understand the challenges and opportunities of educating and managing a health care workforce capable of improving the health and well-being of people and their communities.

From 1989 to 1999, O'Neil was executive director of the Pew Health Professions Commission, which he started as a way to evaluate health professional education and health workforce issues in the debate on national health care reform. The commission was a nationally recognized advocacy group focused on reform in health workforce issues.

He also has published numerous articles, chapters and books on health care. He is or has served as a consultant to the World Health Organization, government of New Zealand, Rockefeller Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Fetzer Institute, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and California HealthCare Foundation, as well as a number of federal, state and institutional agencies.

O'Neil earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Alabama and a master's of public administration and doctorate in history from Syracuse University. In addition, he has received honorary degrees from New York Medical College, the Western University of Health Sciences and two other universities. In 2003 he was elected to an honorary fellowship in the American Academy of Nursing.