"I was looking for this educational opportunity to expand my skills and abilities. One of my mentors, whom I thought was a great teacher and was really involved in community health, had a Master's in Public Health (MPH) and thought the MPH would also be great training for me," says Dr. Richard Allen of Cardston.  Allen completed his 10-month RPAP-funded MPH program in 2004 at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts.

"The MPH provides training in community health and epidemiology for careers such as a medical officer of health," continues Allen.  "My focus was on medical research, so I didn't do as much public health training but more on how to do research, biostatistics, and epidemiology.  I'm interested in clinical research - things that apply to a physician's office."

Allen is applying his new training to some of his own research projects: 

• "The largest research project that I did while I was on my Enrichment Training down in the U.S. was on episiotomies - why we are doing so many and how we could change that process.  It was a project that I presented to both the American and Canadian Academies of Family Physicians and I won the first place award.  It will be published in the February issue of the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine;
• I'm currently doing a study on toddler nutrition - what we should and shouldn't be feeding our toddlers.  Because of the fear of obesity, many parents are cutting back on what they feed their children early on and that is probably not right; and 
• I'm also doing a study on the accuracy of patient-collected information - when a patient tells the doctor his/her medical and family history - how accurate is it.  We are finding that it is not very accurate"

"As a result of my RPAP Enrichment Training," says Allen, "I'm much more aware of the big picture when I see individual patients. While we usually see patients for acute problems, we have to also look at the big picture of the community they live in and the lifestyle that they have. That's the public health point of view - of seeing the whole community and not just one patient after another. I'm always interested in new research projects and how we can change things: the way that physicians work, and quality improvement in the clinics and hospitals. I haven't connected with a research base here in Alberta yet but I'm trying to. While I enjoy clinical practice, I want to get into more teaching, research and health care administration."