An applied learning module about community health assessment: Utilizing university and institute partnerships to enhance undergraduate public health education

The Scholarship and Community Engagement Council in the College of Health and Human Services at the University of New Hampshire is an interdisciplinary collaboration of representatives from academic departments and research and policy focused institutes. This Council examines how applied community-based research and resultant policy development can be incorporated into a traditional academic environment. The Council acquired funding to create and pilot test learning modules to demonstrate to undergraduate students the “real world” application of core public health concepts taught in the traditional classroom setting. The modules were tested in a public health course titled, “Epidemiology and Community Medicine.” This presentation will describe a web-based module containing faculty and student resources/tools to increase undergraduate student knowledge and skills with respect to the relevance, process and challenges of conducting a Community Health Assessment. The Community Health Assessment module was designed to achieve the following objectives: 1. explain the significance and utility of a community health assessment; 2. research and apply common quantitative data sources; and 3. solve data acquisition challenges. The authors will present the Community Health Assessment module implemented in the above noted undergraduate public health course to engage students in a simulated community health assessment experience using publicly available datasets and on-line data tools developed by the research institute. In addition, the benefits of the Community Health Assessment applied learning module for students, the academic department, the institute, and the university to which they all belong will be reviewed.