Community academic education partnerships: Training socially responsible public health leaders

The active engagement of community institutions outside of the academy is vital to the training and education of socially responsible public health leaders. Successfully promoting the health of the public now and into the future will require that our public health leaders be able to demonstrate a capacity for collaborative leadership in community engagement, operate with a definition of public health that is community-oriented and grounded in social justice, and apply social justice and human rights principles when addressing community needs. These competencies require compassion, honesty and respect for all people. The acquisition of such competencies is not likely to occur within the courses for any specific public health core discipline or within the traditional classroom setting. Hence, these are the competencies that are best articulated in the learning outcomes of the student practice experience framed as service learning. This session will describe several community partnerships that have provided excellent training opportunities for public health students as compassionate scholar practitioners and leaders. The presentation will include (1) an overview of the key elements of service learning (2) a discussion of community-led educational strategies; (3) an examination of the reflection element of service learning to produce desired affective learning outcomes (i.e., compassion, respect for all, etc.) and (4) a description of individual reflection and team-based reflective exercises by students, community sponsors/partners and faculty used to facilitate leadership development, build capacity in community and promote action for social change.