UNC-CH Students Place in National CLARION Competition on Interprofessional Collaboration
Students from the UNC-Chapel Hill secured a second-place win at the national 2019 Interprofessional Education (IPE) CLARION Competition.
The team included Monica Kim, DDS Candidate 2020, Adams School of Dentistry; Natalie Browne from the UNC-CH Gillings School of Global Public Health; Uzma Khan from Clinical Rehabilitation and Mental Health Counseling, and Christine Ko from the Eshelman School of Pharmacy.
“This achievement sheds a spotlight on UNC as a national leader in interprofessional education and practice and highlights the amazing collaborative work being done through the Office of IPEP,” said Katharine Ciarrocca, DMD, MSEd, director of interprofessional education and practice at the Adams School of Dentistry. “This is the second year in a row that Adams School of Dentistry has had representation on the CLARION team, which advances our vision to become the global model for oral health education. We could not be more proud of how Monica represented us.”
“Being selected to be a part of this year’s team while also placing a huge win was tremendous for all of us,” said Kim. “I loved working with creative, diverse, and a motivated group of accomplished ladies. I hope we continue to send involved and curious folks from the dental school.
“My scope of our current problems and how we can solve them with clever, forward-thinking solutions has changed how I view my profession and impact within healthcare as a whole.”
This year, teams were tasked to address the rise of individuals experiencing homelessness in Hennepin County, Minnesota, and their resulting poor health outcomes. After assessing county-level data and case studies of individuals experiencing homelessness, the UNC-CH team identified that chronic unmet health issues combined with a bottlenecked system for accessing resources, exacerbated many preventable and treatable conditions.
They identified that the current system created a variety of spaces that offer helpful resources; however, there was no coordination in connecting individuals experiencing homelessness with resources that meet their specific and unique needs.
To address these issues, the UNC-CH team created an innovative, feasible and sustainable solution called, “The Labre Project.”
The Labre Project is a telehealth initiative that meets individuals in need of care in a convenient and efficient way. This project streamlined resources with the implementation of two types of kiosks throughout the city of Minneapolis.
The kiosk model meets two major requirements: connecting clients to nearby resources that best fit their most urgent needs and reducing the bottleneck of healthcare services such as chronic care management, oral health screenings and mental health services.
The team proposed that both modalities of service be integrated among interprofessional teams by virtually connecting them to highly-populated areas. The kiosks serve as hubs of both passive and active interaction, which enables health care teams to provide tailored and personalized treatment for many comprehensive health needs.
The UNC-CH team faculty advisor was Maureen Baker, MS, PhD, assistant professor at the UNC-CH School of Nursing. Lisa Zerden, PhD, associate professor at the UNC-CH School of Social Work generously provided financial support for team travel.
CLARION is a University of Minnesota student organization dedicated to improving health care through interprofessional collaboration. For more than 15 years, the University of Minnesota has hosted the local student case competition for health professional students, enabling them to achieve a 360-degree perspective on patient safety in today’s health care system and how it might be improved.
