Training the Primary Care Workforce to Deliver Team-Based Care in Underserved Areas: The Teaching Health Center Program

Policy Points

• The Teaching Health Center Graduate Medical Education program is a model designed to align health workforce training with population health needs.
• Long-term financial uncertainty undermines the sustainability of teaching health centers.

Abstract

Access to high-quality primary care is critical to improving population health and ensuring a more equitable distribution of health and health care resources. In 2010, as a part of the Affordable Care Act, Congress created the Teaching Health Center Graduate Medical Education (THCGME) program to support the development of primary care medical and dental residency programs in community-based health centers. In the last decade, the THCGME program has been training primary care providers to deliver care to underserved populations and practice in interprofessional teams. The goal is for these clinicians to better address community health needs, including chronic disease management, maternal care, and integrated behavioral health. The THCGME program’s successes — including training in team-based care settings that are responsive to community needs and training graduates who practice in medically underserved settings — can inform how and where we invest in training the primary care workforce, ways the nation can redesign and finance graduate medical education to meet population health needs, and how state health workforce investments can complement federal efforts to expand the workforce and improve health care for underserved populations.

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