Why Service Learning?

Rationale:
The United States of America spends approximately $1.3 trillion each year on health care. However, 39 million Americans, including 8.4 million children, still lack basic health care coverage. Community organizations and government agencies, such as the Indiana Primary Health Care Association, are focused on achieving 100% access to primary health care for all Americans. Meeting the 100% access challenge is going to be difficult since medical school applications across the country are shrinking, and the number of graduating medical students choosing primary care residencies is dwindling. Finding creative ways to engage students in community health care at an early stage is critical to developing a pool of future physicians that are committed to serving the underserved.

Impact:
By participating in “hands-on” learning, the students will visualize the relevance and importance of serving the underserved to becoming a future physician, while developing their leadership and communication skills. This course can serve as the initial piece of a service learning continuum in underserved medicine for students in medical training. This course will engage pre-medical students, the Office of Medical Service Learning engages medical students, and the Dyson initiative engages resident physicians, and the Family Medicine Faculty Development Fellowship in Underserved Medicine engages faculty fellows.

Community Partnerships:
Community leaders will be actively involved with each student project for this course, as the projects will be targeted to serve community clinics needs.

Caring for the Uninsured: A Growing Crisis for Indiana and the Nation, a presentation (1.3mb pdf) by Dr. Deanna R. Willis, M.D., M.B.A.