摘要：Service learning (SL) is a form of community-centered experiential education that places emerging health professionals in community-generated service projects and provides structured opportunities for reflection on the broader social, economic, and political contexts of health. We describe the elements and impact of five distinct week-long intensive SL courses focused on the context of urban, rural, border, and indigenous health contexts. Students involved in these SL courses demonstrated a commitment to community-engaged scholarship and practice in both their student and professional lives. SL is directly in line with the core public health value of social justice and serves as a venue to strengthen community–campus partnerships in addressing health disparities through sustained collaboration and action in vulnerable communities. The Institute of Medicine has called for integration of ecological approaches that consider the social, economic, and political context of health into public health education. 1 However, there are limited reports on how to teach and measure the outcomes of education programs that link learning and application of these concepts in public health. 2 Service learning (SL) is one such pedagogy that can enhance student awareness of and commitment to the elimination of health disparities. 3–5 SL is a form of community-centered experiential education that locates emerging health professionals in community-generated service projects and provides structured opportunities for reflection on the broader social, economic, and political contexts of health. 4 Through guided reflection on academic readings and service, students link their service experience to broader systems-level thinking, 5,6 enhance cultural humility, 7,8 and increase their civic engagement. 9 Although widely applied in the clinical health professions of nursing, 10 medicine, 7,11 pharmacy, 12 and public health, 6,13,14 research on the impact of SL on students, faculty, and community partners is relatively new. 4 We present an innovative SL initiative modeled on the reduction of health disparities through exploration, reflection, and action on the social determinants of health. Our program consists of five distinct week-long intensive SL courses that are focused on binational, urban, rural, and indigenous communities in the southwestern United States. Specifically, we describe our program’s contribution to graduate public health education and ways in which students, faculty, and community partners discover and act on the social determinants of health.
