A Learning Collaboratory to develop student's core professional and practice skills: An innovative approach to improving community health

The University of Miami MPH Learning Collaboratory has been established to transform the learning experience of MPH students by providing opportunities to develop core skills necessary for effective public health practice. The overarching goal of the Learning Collaboratory is to develop students who will become effective public health change agents, and through collaborative partnerships with community practitioners, to simultaneously improve public health in the community.  Through mutually beneficial collaborative partnerships between students, instructors and public health practitioners, students address specific, real-world public health needs in the community by applying essential skills they learn (e.g., communication, analytic thinking). Organized in small groups around common interests (e.g., mental health), students in the Collaboratory learn about public health substantive areas while building essential competencies required to successfully develop and implement projects in collaboration with community public health organizations.  Across three consecutive semesters, the Collaboratory provides the opportunity for MPH students to complete their required Capstone Experience in a supportive and interactive group context. Under the supervision of the instructors, the Collaboratory group fosters the development of new MPH students into senior-level students prepared to become public health practitioners. These students then have the opportunity to help mentor incoming students in the subsequent year’s Collaboratory group. In this way the sustainability and impact of students’ community public health projects is guaranteed across time. This presentation will describe the structure and organization of the Collaboratory and present the measures being used to evaluate its impact at the student and the community level.