About HealthBegins Upstream Training and Education

HealthBegins collaborates with courageous leaders to improve the social drivers of health and equity at all levels: individual social needs, community-level social determinants of health and deeper structural determinants of health equity. That’s what we mean by “moving upstream.”

Since 2012, HealthBegins has been a pioneer in upstream education and training for health care professionals. Its practical, skills-oriented educational content and training materials, along with its signature Upstream Quality Improvement approach, are routinely used across the U.S. to train "Upstreamists": health professionals who demonstrate the knowledge and skills to “move upstream” to advance health equity. This includes:

• Practice transformation to improve equity and individual health-related social needs for patient populations
• Institutional and system transformation to improve equity and social determinants of health in communities
• Societal transformation to dismantle broader structural determinants of health inequity in states and nations

On the AMA Ed Hub, HealthBegins features interactive modules that are part of a series: "Core Competencies for Upstreamists." Through short modules, covering topics such as Upstream Quality Improvement and Management, Community Health Informatics and Social Epidemiology, among others,learners can increase their foundational awareness of what it takes to transform a practice or a health system and work with community partners to address these upstream factors. Modules in the series are eligible for continuing education credit for physicians and nurses.