Experiential Learning in Community Health

Course Learning Objectives: 

By the end of this course, the student should be able to:

1. Apply strategies of community engagement and research to community health problems.
2. Discuss a specific community health problem in depth.

Target Students: Students enrolled in the Community/Urban Health scholarly concentration. However, non-CUH students may also take the course with permission from course director.

Purpose and Rationale for the Course: This elective in Community/Urban Health (CUH) is intended to expand the options for CUH students to include project-specific community health leadership experiences that will develop their ability to identify important community health issues, identify and engage with key stakeholders around community health/population health problems, recognize important social determinants of health and to work collaboratively to develop solutions to identified community health problems. As all scholarly concentration participants must complete an elective in their fourth year related to their chosen concentration, students in the Community/Urban Health (CUH) scholarly concentration now have six options:

• IDIS 354 (Community Health Care), which provides faculty-guided leadership opportunities in GW's Healing Clinic
• IDIS 367 (Experiential Learning in Community Health), this elective
• MED 353 (Case-Based Elective in Criminal Justice Health), a 2-week intensive rotation exploring the intersection of healthcare and criminal justice
• MED 346 (Introduction to Correctional Medicine), a 2-week elective including both case-based learning and a clinical rotation at the DC jail
• IDIS 307 (Culinary Medicine), a 2-week elective providing students with evidence-based, practical knowledge in order to better understand nutrition and how it relates to the health of patients and their communities through hands-on cooking classes and the educational modules
• IDIS 407 (Advanced Culinary Medicine), a 4-week elective focused on integrating students into the academic culinary medicine team

Course Description: This senior elective will allow students to use experiential learning to build skills in community health engagement and management. Students will be required to participate in this project for a minimum of 4 weeks. Students must identify a specific community health problem and select a mentor (or organizational leader). This mentor will help guide the students in developing their identified problem description/statement, and with community exploration and learning. Students will complete didactic skill-building training through preselected online courses/readings or self-identified courses on community health focused topics (i.e. Community Based Participatory Research, Community Health Needs Assessments, Geomapping, etc). Students are required to complete a total of 12 site visits, expert consultation meetings, and/or community/policy meetings focused on their specific topic of interest. Students will complete an 8-10 page written report to discuss their identified problem and community informed proposed solution.

Students should identify a mentor for their project and have an explicit, detailed project plan for the elective that will meet requirements. This must be submitted to the course director and be approved before starting the elective. This should also include a signed letter of support from the mentor.

Prerequisites: 

• CUH scholarly concentration students: students completing requirements for the CUH scholarly concentration must have completed all necessary pre-clinical responsibilities including: lecture/workshop series, summer experience, and other requirements for the CUH scholarly concentration. For more information, please see the CUH scholarly concentration website.
• Non-CUH scholarly concentration students: students must be in their 4th year of medical school and thereby have completed their core clerkship curriculum. With permission from course director, these students are eligible for the course.