The Department of Health Care Sciences (DHCS) has a long history of innovation in health care education, research, and practice. Established in 1974, the DHCS initiated a unique model of primary care training and education as the means of providing clinical services through an active faculty practice plan to a university-based HMO. As recently as 1994, the DHCS encompassed clinical, educational, and research programs related to primary care, preventive medicine, and public health. As the health care industry evolved, the DHCS changed its structure and programs. Presently, the DHCS is a streamlined, more focused version of its former self while maintaining dedication to education, health care, and research.

The Department of Health Care Sciences faculty and researchers are a talented and dedicated group whose work is organized around three central themes.

• Clinical scholarship, a term coined in DHCS, is a scholarly, evidence-based approach to all clinical issues, ranging from individual patient care to validation of practice. In a clinical scholarship approach, scientific reasoning and clinical reasoning are identical and serve as a framework by which the DHCS faculty will integrate health care, theory, research, and education. Clinical scholarship provides the foundation for our educational Health Science Programs. For more information about any specific educational program, including on-campus or distance education, undergraduate, certificate or graduate degrees please click on the respective program title.
• Community service learning is a crosscutting theme for all our on-campus educational programs. Faculty, serving as preceptors for medical, physician assistant, physical therapy, nurse practitioner, and public health students, provide health care to underserved populations in the District of Columbia. Our vision is to improve overall access to and quality of health care by promoting future careers in community health and social work organizations. The Division of Community Service Learning oversees several programs to provide students with community-based experiences, including ISCOPES, AHEC, and HCOP.
• The meaning (or significance) of health, spirituality, care provision, independence, and creativity form the common linkage among the funded projects in the DHCS. Researchers within the DHCS are nationally and internationally known for their scholarship and cutting edge approach to examining health from a broad perspective.