By Randi Sokol M.D., M.P.H., Alisha Dyer, D.O., and Charlene Hauser, M.D., M.P.H.

Likely if you are reading this article, you are aware of the impending shortage of primary care doctors our nation faces:  The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) will be adding approximately 32 million new patients to the system by 2014.  For a country that already has a huge shortage of primary care physicians, this added patient load poses daunting primary care workforce shortage issues, with a shortfall of approximately 46,000 PCPs predicted by the year 2025. The Council on Graduate Medical Education (COGME) estimates that in order to provide adequate access and hence optimal outcomes for our nation of patients, 40-50% of our workforce will need to be primary care physicians.  Yet our medical schools continue to produce more physicians interested in specialty care. So, as primary care doctors who deeply believe in the importance of our role, what can we do to garner a future of primary care physicians who make up the majority of the workforce and are leaders within our medical communities?
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By Daniel S. Blumenthal, M.D., M.P.H.

Primary care is often characterized as continuous, coordinated, comprehensive, accessible, and accountable. The specialties to which these qualities apply are generally recognized as Family Medicine, General Internal Medicine, and General Pediatrics. But there is another:  Public Health.  While practitioners of the three larger specialties provide primary care to individuals, Public Health specialists provide primary care to communities or populations.  The patient of the public health physician is the community or population for whose health (s)he has responsibility.

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By Andrew Hart, MPH

My interest in HIV is both personal and professional. Personal because I am a member of a community that continues to be the hardest hit by the epidemic: Gay men. Some of my friends are HIV+ and while the shock and sadness is perhaps less than when the epidemic was nothing short of a nightmare through the 1980s and early 1990s, the struggles they must confront are many and complicated, and will only increase as they age with the disease. 
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