Students and communities working together to address health determinants

Submitted by Kirsti Battista on June 12, 2014 - 11:53am

An article by Bainbridge, Grossman, Dharamsi, Porter and Wood from Education for Health, Volume 27 Issue 1 (April 2014).

Background: This article presents an innovative model for interprofessional community-oriented learning. The Engagement Studios model involves a partnership between community organizations and students as equal partners in conversations and activities aimed at addressing issue of common concern as they relate to the social determinants of health. Methods: Interprofessional teams of students from health and non-health disciplines work with community partners to identify priority communities issues and explore potential solutions. Results: The student teams work with a particular community organization, combining their unique disciplinary perspectives to develop a project proposal, which addresses the community issues that have been jointly identified. Approved proposals receive a small budget to implement the project. Discussion: In this paper we present the Engagement Studies model and share lessons learned from a pilot of this educational initiative.

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