Whither Collaboration? Integrating Professional Services to Close Reciprocal Gaps in Health and Education

Abstract

This chapter sets forth a transdisciplinary response to an urgent problem: the significant contribution of poor health to racial and social class gaps in educational outcomes that divide America. The first section (1) describes reciprocal gaps in health and education, (2) identifies prevailing market values that undergird reforms that are failing to produce excellent and equitable outcomes across both systems of care, and (3) articulates a rationale and conceptual framework for collaborative civic professionalism among practitioners of human improvement in medicine, health, welfare, and education. The second section envisions university-sponsored adaptations designed to overcome barriers to partnering across the human improvement professions. Intersystem partnering is not without detractors; partnering may threaten the autonomy of professionals and the efficiency of markets without producing improved outcomes. Thus, we conclude by calling for a series of disciplined dialogs about how to facilitate collaborative interdependence and health–education partnerships designed to eliminate the gaps.