Public health partnerships in medical toxicology education and practice

In December 2002, the medical toxicology sub-board, which consists of representatives from emergency medicine, preventive medicine, and pediatrics, released revised core content for medical toxicology, aiming to better meet the academic challenges imposed by the continually expanding knowledge base of medical toxicology. These challenges included the addition of relatively new areas of interest in medical toxicology, including population health, while simultaneously ensuring that a structural framework existed to accommodate future areas of interest. There is no evidence readily available to assess how well the educational curricula of existing fellowship programs are meeting these needs. In an effort to address this, the authors describe a medical toxicology fellowship program that consists of a partnership among the Emory University School of Medicine, the Georgia Poison Control Center, and the CDC, as well as the results of a reorganization of its academic curriculum that occurred in 2006. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first published report describing such a curriculum redesign. Suggestions and potential resources proposed as enhancements for the public health-associated education of medical toxicology fellows are discussed. The authors also seek to initiate a discussion among programs about how to optimally meet the new challenges developed by the medical toxicology sub-board.