A century after Flexner, Goldmark, and Welsh-Rose revolutionized postsecondary education for health professionals, two significant reports from the Lancet and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) sought to similarly redesign the education of health professionals for the 21st century. The independent Lancet Commission led by Julio Frenk and Lincoln Chen released Health Professionals for a New Century: Transforming Education to Strengthen Health Systems in an Interdependent World. The IOM produced The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health. Both of these reports provide high-level visions for the health professions, but rely on educators to identify, through a process of continuous learning and innovation, the relevant best practices and mechanisms for scaling up proven, improved approaches to integrated health professional education.
To facilitate the implementation of the recommendations from the IOM and Lancet Commission reports, the IOM created an ongoing, evidence- based forum for multidisciplinary exchanges on innovative health professional education initiatives. Known as the Global Forum on Innovation in Health Professional Education, this forum not only convenes stakeholders to illuminate contemporary issues in health professional education, but it also supports an ongoing, innovative mechanism to incubate and evaluate new ideas—a mechanism that is multifocal, multidisciplinary, and global.