creating the future of health and social equity

Community Engaged Learning

CEL

The Community Engaged Learning (CEL) program strives to contribute to the Cumming School of Medicine’s (CSM) commitment to social accountability and become more relevant to the needs of the communities. CSM and CEL hope to promote a culture of collegiality and reciprocity amongst learners and communities. Its role is outlined as a centralized resource for the facilitation and coordination of CEL activities across programs, departments and institutes at the CSM, and as an easily identifiable “front door” for community organizations looking to form CEL partnerships with the CSM and recruit community engaged learners from the CSM.

CEL seeks bi-directional learning and teaching that builds capacity and meets the needs of all involved. Learning may take place through many forms including reflections, critical analysis, experiential learning, readings and oral lessons. Community Engagement (CE) is achieved through support of partnerships and intended to address the community’s health related goal. A key principle of CE in the CSM is mutual benefit and reciprocal, respectful relationships. At its core, the partnership focuses on addressing the community-identified priorities with direction coming from the community.

The CEL experience focuses on community capacity building and learning to utilize knowledge within communities, with an emphasis on health equity and social determinants. Capacity building is defined as the process of developing and strengthening the skills, resources or abilities that communities possess to best serve their interests. Communities are groups of people with similar characteristics such as geography, ethnicity, religion, profession, income, age, sexuality, gender, shared interest, or other factors. People can also be a part of more than one community at the same time. The intent is to collaborate with others to build and sustain healthier communities.

CEL hopes to promote a culture of collegiality and reciprocity between community and the CSM through the following aspirations:

•   Community knowledge and expertise will serve as the starting point for all work undertaken by students
•   All student contributions will be in response to community-identified priorities
•   Partnerships with community will build capacity and trust among all parties

Key contact:

Dr. Amy Gausvik

Lisa Yeo

From the field:

Student Reflections of CEL