Experiential Learning Through Participatory Action Research in Public Health Supports Community-Based Training of Future Health Professionals

Abstract

Engaging community members in research can help cultivate effective partnerships while providing experiential training and continuing education opportunities. Several studies have involved communities in this way, though many have been small in the scale of community involvement or have included little detail of the institutional review board process by which community members became approved researchers in the study. This article presents findings on an evaluation of the training procedures and experiences of 703 first-time community-based volunteer researchers who were recruited in their communities and trained on-site to enroll research participants, collect data, and provide individualized consultation of results at travelling health education and research fairs. Open-ended registration prompts and postfair surveys assessed volunteers’ reasons for participating, comfort with their volunteer experiences, and attitudes toward the biomedical research process. An open-ended survey assessed two key community partners’ perspectives about their organizations’ involvement with supporting the research throughout the process. Volunteers reported their experience to be a unique training opportunity, citing its ability to help them engage with their community, advance research, and obtain additional experience in their health field of interest, particularly nursing, allied health, and medicine-related careers. Community partners cited that their community’s participation as volunteer researchers served as a tool to educate the larger community about research, which enabled other research projects to gain acceptance. Together, these results demonstrate that using volunteer researchers can strengthen community research partnerships while providing valuable training experience in public health research for current and aspiring health personnel.

Experiential Learning in the Classroom: The Impact of Entrepreneurial Pitches for Global Health Pedagogy

“…Some students would have been exposed to scaling interventions in previous courses; however, this course allowed them to actively engage with these concepts in a concrete manner. Various experiential learning researchers have made reference to individuals applying knowledge and theories learned in coursework, (Cashman & Seifer, 2008; Hu et al, 2016) and gaining exposure to the workplace (Chorazy & Klinedinst, 2019; Marriott et al, 2015; Maudsley & Strivens, 2000; McIntire & DiVito, 2017). Third, we acknowledge that the process leading to entrepreneurial pitching could be strengthened and made more practical as students were not placed in the field.…”

“…Furthermore, experiential learning is particularly important in the field of global and public health as it provides students with the opportunity to use specific public health theories to address real health challenges (Hu et al, 2016). For example, experiential learning methods have been incorporated into various public health, medicine, nursing, and health-related fields (Marriott et al, 2015). However, studies to date examining experiential learning in public health often focus on service-learning programs that are integrated into the academic curriculum and place a larger emphasis on community engagement (Cauley et al, 2001).…”

Experiential learning for primary healthcare workers in low- and middle-income countries: a scoping review protocol

“…A significant number of primary studies have been conducted on the applications of this intervention to health education. [8] has demonstrated that using participatory based learning programs such as experiential learning can strengthen community research partnerships as well as provide valuable training experiences for current and aspiring health personnel [8]. In addition, [4] found that the reflective writing step of experiential learning can contribute to identifying and addressing of gaps in medical education for resource-limited settings [4].…”

A Scoping Review of Experiential Learning in Public Health Education From the Perspective of Students, Faculty, and Community Partners

“…Negative experiences included a mismatch between community organization and students, as well as time and funding constraints. Community and agency partnerships are an essential component of many ELAs, and like any relationship, they are built on time, trust, and experience (Marriott et al, 2015). These external agencies and community partners are often involved in supervising, training, guiding, or assessing the students on-sites (Marriott et al, 2015).…”