AOBPM Preventive Medicine study guide
AOBPM Preventive Medicine · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
AOA Osteopathic Board Certification in Preventive Medicine is administered by the American Osteopathic Board of Preventive Medicine (AOBPM), one of the AOA's specialty certifying boards. Certification is aimed at osteopathic physicians (DOs) practicing in three specialty tracks: Aerospace Medicine, Occupational/Environmental Medicine, and Public Health/Community Medicine. The board also offers a Certificate of Added Qualifications (CAQ) in Occupational Medicine and conjoint certification pathways in Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine and Correctional Medicine, plus an OMT Designation. Assessment occurs through written examinations and oral examinations; the AOBPM's published 2026 calendar lists written and oral examinations in all three specialty tracks on October 15, 2026, alongside a CAQ Occupational Medicine initial and recertification examination on the same date. Topics on this exam: Aerospace Medicine, Occupational/Environmental Medicine, and Public Health/Community Medicine. The AOBPM Preventive Medicine study guide has 3 sections and about 861 words.
01Aerospace Medicine: Physiology at Altitude and the Flight Environment
Aerospace medicine tests how the body behaves when the atmosphere, acceleration, and pressure change faster than physiology can compensate. Master the gas laws (Boyle, Dalton, Henry) because every altitude and pressure question reduces to them. Boyle's law explains trapped-gas expansion in sinus, middle ear, gut, and dental cavities during ascent; Henry's law explains decompression sickness when dissolved nitrogen comes out of solution. Know the oxygen cascade: falling barometric pressure lowers alveolar PO2, so hypoxic hypoxia dominates at altitude even though the fraction of oxygen (21%) is unchanged.
292 words, about 1 min02Occupational and Environmental Medicine: Exposure, Dose, and Prevention
Occupational medicine frames disease as a function of exposure (agent, route, dose, duration) interacting with host susceptibility. Know the hierarchy of controls: elimination, substitution, engineering controls, administrative controls, then personal protective equipment last. Understand exposure assessment: air sampling, biological monitoring, and the difference between threshold limit values (TLVs) and permissible exposure limits (PELs). Learn classic toxidromes and target organs: lead (anemia, neuropathy, nephropathy), mercury (tremor, erethism), organophosphates (cholinergic crisis), solvents (CNS depression, hepatotoxicity), silica (silicosis), asbestos (mesothelioma, asbestosis), and noise (noise-induced hearing loss, the 4 kHz notch).
275 words, about 1 min03Public Health and Community Medicine: Population Prevention and Epidemiology
Community medicine asks you to think in populations, not patients. Master measures of frequency (incidence, prevalence) and association (relative risk, odds ratio, attributable risk), then link them to study designs: cohort (incidence, RR), case-control (odds ratio), cross-sectional (prevalence), and randomized trials (causality). Know screening principles: the condition must be important, detectable early, treatable, and the test must have acceptable sensitivity, specificity, and predictive values. Understand prevention levels: primordial, primary, secondary, tertiary.
294 words, about 1 min