Preventive medicine matrix as a residency curriculum development tool

Preventive medicine has become a central issue in health care reform, but how best to teach and implement health promotion/disease prevention (HP/DP) in clinical practice is still undefined. This article describes the Preventive Medicine Matrix as a tool to help organize the complex and broad area of prevention into a workable curriculum for residency programs. The matrix is divided into life-cycle periods and HP/DP curricular topics. Using the matrix, a program can assess the areas it is addressing well and those that require emphasis. A major strength of the matrix is its flexibility, which allows modifications for the different needs of individual programs.