The American Medical Association announced June 14 that it will donate $11 million to 11 U.S. medical schools as part of its Accelerating Change in Medical Education initiative.

"We are thrilled to award funding to 11 medical schools for their bold, transformative proposals designed to close the gaps between how medical students are trained and how health care is delivered," said AMA President Jeremy A. Lazarus, MD, in a press statement.

Lazarus said the initiative is meant to "identify specific changes in medical education that can be applied in medical schools throughout the nation to enable students to thrive in a changing health care environment and improve the health of our nation’s patients."

Project funding has been awarded to the following medical schools:

• Indiana University School of Medicine
• Mayo Medical School
• NYU School of Medicine
• Oregon Health & Science University School of Medicine
• Penn State College of Medicine
• The Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University
• The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University
• University of California, Davis School of Medicine
• University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine
• University of Michigan Medical School
• Vanderbilt University School of Medicine

The AMA will provide $1 million to each school over five years to fund the educational innovations envisioned by each institution, officials say. A critical component of the initiative will be to establish a learning consortium with the selected schools to rapidly disseminate best practices to other medical and health profession schools.

Of the 141 eligible medical schools, 119 – more than 80 percent – submitted letters of intent outlining their proposals in February. In March, 28 individual schools and three collaborative groups of schools were selected to submit full proposals before a national advisory panel worked with the AMA to select the final 11 schools.

The proposals encompass many educational innovations, including models for competency-based student progression, total student immersion within the health care system from the first day of medical school and the increased use of health IT and virtual patients. Read short descriptions of each proposal here.

[See also: Med schools see IT as central to mission]