Community Voices Service-Learning Partnerships

Project Description
Project Products
For More Information

Project Description

In Summer 2002, Community-Campus Partnerships for Health (CCPH) began an exciting new project with a grant from the WK Kellogg Foundation - Preparing the Health Workforce of the Future: Community Voices Service-Learning Partnerships.

The Community Voices: HealthCare for the Underserved program is a multi-year initiative funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The program is designed to improve access to quality health care for the under and uninsured. In addition, the program is designed to give a voice to communities regarding health care access and quality in terms of national policy decision making. A total of thirteen communities form the foundation of Community Voices, working to identify and implement best practices in meeting the needs of those who either do not receive health services and/or receive inadequate health services.

Although not designed as a "health workforce initiative" or with an explicit academic component, the Kellogg Community Voices program - as a national initiative, and as individual programs at the community level-can make a significant contribution to understanding the health workforce challenges facing communities, advancing recommendations for change, and implementing solutions.

With their emphasis on community-based preventive care, community partnerships and policy change, Community Voices grantees are an ideal setting for service-learning partnerships, in which college and university students provide community service combined with reflection and explicit learning objectives as part of their formal education.

With support from the WK Kellogg Foundation, CCPH began an effort to facilitate and strengthen community-campus partnerships between CV grantees and nearby colleges and universities, and to articulate the role of communities in achieving a competent, diverse health workforce.

This effort was exciting and unique in that communities seek to engage colleges and universities as partners in their efforts to meet community needs, improve health and ensure a competent, diverse workforce. Typically, higher educational institutions "reach out" to the community to fulfill their academic missions of teaching, research and service. Thus, this effort generated new knowledge about community-driven service-learning partnerships that can inform practice across the country.

Project Products

Click here to view the October, 2002 Community Voices PowerPoint Presentation.

Click here to view the June, 2003 Community Voices PowerPoint presentation.

Click here to view an article about Preparing the Health Workforce of the Future: Community Voices Service-Learning Partnerships.

Please click here to read an edited transcript of the tele-briefing, "Building and Sustaining Community-Campus Partnerships."

Please click here to read a transcript of the tele-briefing, “Community-Campus Partnerships & Community Health Worker Initiatives.”

Please click here to view selected references related to Community Health Worker initiatives and community-campus partnerships.

Community-Campus Partnerships for Health: Making A Positive Impact, published by the WK Kellogg Foundation, reports on pragmatic insights from the diverse community-campus partnerships involved in the Community Voices Service-Learning Partnerships Project.

For More Information

For more information on the Community Voices Service-Learning Partnerships Project, call 206-543-8178 or email ccphuw@u.washington.edu.

For more information on the Community Voices Program, please click here.