Department of Health Behavior, Gillings School of Global Public Health, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, United States.
Front Public Health. 2023 May 11;11:1129330. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1129330. eCollection 2023.
To ensure workforce readiness, graduate-level public health training programs must prepare students to collaborate with communities on improving public health practice and tools. The Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH) requires Master of Public Health (MPH) students to complete an Integrative Learning Experience (ILE) at the end of their program of study that yields a high-quality written product demonstrating synthesis of competencies. CEPH suggests written products ideally be "developed and delivered in a manner that is useful to external stakeholders, such as non-profit or governmental organizations." However, there are limited examples of the ILE pedagogies and practices most likely to yield mutual benefit for students and community partners. To address this gap, we describe a community-led, year-long, group-based ILE for MPH students, called Capstone. This service-learning course aims to (1) increase capacity of students and partner organizations to address public health issues and promote health equity; (2) create new or improved public health resources, programs, services, and policies that promote health equity; (3) enhance student preparedness and marketability for careers in public health; and (4) strengthen campus-community partnerships. Since 2009, 127 Capstone teams affiliated with the Department of Health Behavior at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have worked with seventy-nine partner organizations to provide over 103,000 h of in-kind service and produce 635 unique products or "deliverables." This paper describes key promising practices of Capstone, specifically its staffing model; approach to project recruitment, selection, and matching; course format; and assignments. Using course evaluation data, we summarize student and community partner outcomes. Next, we share lessons learned from 13 years of program implementation and future directions for continuing to maximize student and community partner benefits. Finally, we provide recommendations for other programs interested in replicating the Capstone model.
为了确保劳动力的准备就绪，研究生级别的公共卫生培训计划必须培养学生与社区合作，改进公共卫生实践和工具。公共卫生教育理事会 (CEPH) 要求公共卫生硕士 (MPH) 学生在完成学业后完成综合学习体验 (ILE)，该体验产生高质量的书面产品，展示能力的综合。CEPH 建议书面产品“以对外部利益相关者（如非营利组织或政府组织）有用的方式来开发和交付”。然而，对于最有可能为学生和社区合作伙伴带来互惠互利的 ILE 教学法和实践，几乎没有例子。为了解决这一差距，我们描述了一种面向社区的、为期一年的、基于小组的 MPH 学生综合学习体验，称为 Capstone。这门服务学习课程旨在：(1) 提高学生和合作伙伴组织解决公共卫生问题和促进健康公平的能力；(2) 创建新的或改进的促进健康公平的公共卫生资源、计划、服务和政策；(3) 增强学生在公共卫生领域的就业准备和市场竞争力；(4) 加强校园-社区伙伴关系。自 2009 年以来，北卡罗来纳大学教堂山分校吉尔灵斯全球公共卫生学院健康行为系的 127 个 Capstone 团队与 79 个合作伙伴组织合作，提供了超过 103000 小时的实物服务，并制作了 635 个独特的产品或“可交付成果”。本文介绍了 Capstone 的关键有希望的实践，特别是其人员配备模式；项目招聘、选择和匹配的方法；课程格式；和任务。我们使用课程评估数据总结了学生和社区合作伙伴的成果。接下来，我们分享了 13 年项目实施的经验教训以及继续最大限度地提高学生和社区合作伙伴利益的未来方向。最后，我们为其他有兴趣复制 Capstone 模式的项目提供了建议。
