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Academic Medicine, Service Learning, and the Health of the Poor

A Community Perspective

La Clinica del Pueblo, Washington, D.C.

RENE WALLIS

District Of Columbia Primary Care Association, Washington, D.C.

RONALD DAVID

University of Maryland

KEITH EICHE

University of Maryland

Service learning has been proposed as a way for universities to expose undergraduate and graduate students to ethnically and socially diverse populations while engaging them in constructive community-based activities. In Washington, D.C., several academic medical centers initiated service-learning programs that placed health professions students in community clinics serving the uninsured. In this article, the authors explore the impact of these programs on the clinics and their communities. A project initiated by George Washington University failed because the health center was unwilling to respond to community needs. A more encouraging model exists in Howard University's efforts to expand services to uninsured Hispanic patients through partnership with a free clinic serving the Hispanic community. The authors conclude that service-learning programs based in underserved communities are most likely to succeed in the context of a full-scale institutional commitment to the health of the target population.

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