Academic medicine, service learning, and the health of the poor - A community perspective

Service learning has been proposed as a way for universities to expose unde rgraduate and graduate students to ethnically and socially diverse populati ons while engaging them in constructive community-based activities. In Wash ington, D.C., several academic medical centers initiated service-learning p rograms that placed health professions students in community clinics servin g the uninsured. In this article, the authors explore the impact of these p rograms on the clinics and their communities. A project initiated by George Washington University failed because the health center was unwilling to re spond to community needs. A more encouraging model exists in Howard Univers ity's efforts to expand services to uninsured Hispanic patients through par tnership with a free clinic serving the Hispanic community. The authors con clude that service-learning programs based in underserved communities are m ost likely to succeed in the context of a full-scale institutional commitme nt to the health of the target population.