Moving from medical student placement to a community-academic partnership with a rural community

This article explains a partnership-based community education model, which uses as an example a partnership between the Center for Healthy Communities in the Depart ment of Family and Community Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) and the rural Marion area of central Wisconsin. MCW is similar to other medical schools in that if has a strong history and philos ophy of placing students in communities for educational purposes. This arti cle describes how the Center for Healthy Communities is moving beyond stude nt placement to true partnership building. The center followed four stages of development as it built a partnership with this rural Wisconsin communit y: (1) establish and build relationships, (2) develop common goals, (3) dev elop and implement programs and (4) maintain and expand progress. The cente r also applied a set of principles in developing the partnership By followi ng the stages and applying the principles, the center found that two elemen ts wore key to building a partnership for medical student education and com munity health improvement: long-term commitment and ability and willingness to spend rime in the community. As a result, a meaningful, ongoing partner ship developed that benefits both the community and MCW.