Expectations and Goals

Service learning offers students the opportunity to work together with historically stigmatized communities to address community identified needs. To facilitate that effort, it is important to make yourself aware of these goals and expectations.

Clinical Service

Learn how environmental, institutional, political, and economic factors create barriers to better health.

Understand the significance of grounding service in ongoing assessments of community-identified needs.
Recognize that impact may not always be obvious or immediate. It takes time and patience to develop trust with communities that have experienced historical trauma. Consider this work an opportunity to increase clinical and cultural humility.
Remember that the main goal of clinical service learning is to connect patients with sustainable, high-quality care.
Appreciate the richness and strengths of partner communities.

Mentorship/Outreach

Expand your understanding of the many systemic barriers that underrepresented students must overcome to achieve their health professional goals.
Develop teaching and communication skills by sharing your expertise in interviewing, networking, and navigating application processes.
Provide inspiration and role-modeling to young people who might not have other connections to the health professional world.
Gain experience in career-long mentorship skills considerate of ethics of working with minors, boundary setting and reciprocity.

Advocacy

Learn to address health inequity on a large scale through political, social, or institutional interventions.
Develop communication skills in tandem with your professional training. The ability to convey complex medical topics in an approachable way increases impact.
Effective advocacy involves building common ground. Learn to build relationships and dialogue with stakeholders that might have different perspectives than your own.
Learn to identify why some communities are failed by our current system and to think upstream to improve outcomes.