Real Service Learning Activities

This presentation will address the differences between traditional modes of health professions student involvement in communities and real service-learning activities that are essential for addressing health disparities and helping students to consider practice in a rural area. It will trace the experience of a rural community in Arizona in working with faculty from The University of Arizona Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health over a three-year period to develop significant service-learning experiences to benefit both the community and the students in a week-long, intensive Rural Health Service Learning Institute. Participants will learn how the Eastern Arizona Area Health Education Center, the Gila County Health Department, and the San Carlos Apache Tribal Health Department moved from initially suggesting activities in which students shadowed the their staff to developing activities that truly benefited the community because they would not have occurred without the students present. Examples of service-learning projects carried out by the students will include developing and pilot testing a MAPP community survey for the Gila County Health Department, conducting a “How to Get to College” night for local parents and high school students interested in health careers, staging a community clean-up project in collaboration with San Carlos Apache high school students from the Health Occupations Students of America (HOSA) club, and creating, advertising, and conducting a community health issues forum and writing a forum report for the community. Participants will also have an opportunity to work in small groups with faculty for this session to conceptualize real service-learning projects that they might incorporate into their own current courses or new ones that they might develop.