At the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, one of our missions is to provide our students with opportunities to foster meaningful connections and collaboration with the Bronx community. Einstein’s longitudinal Service-Learning Course was developed in 2022 in alignment with this mission.
In this course, students will learn about the needs and strengths of the Bronx and other local communities by pairing active community service with critical reflection and a dedicated curriculum imparting the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed for successful community engagement.
Students will:
- partner with community-based organizations (CBOs) to engage in meaningful service that meets the community’s identified needs and has reciprocal benefits to the student and the community served.
- have structured time to prepare for, reflect on, and connect the service experience to professional competencies such as cultural humility, professionalism, inter- and intra-professional communication, teamwork, and social responsibility.
- have opportunities to interweave service-learning with other educational and clinical experiences across the medical school curriculum to learn about and address social determinants of health in order to provide patient-centered care with cultural humility.
In addition to curricular service-learning, students will also have many extracurricular opportunities to engage with the local community. The Service-Learning program will serve as a clearinghouse for information, guidance, and support to provide students with opportunities to engage with the Bronx community and to have an impact on health and social-justice. Students will learn, share, and nurture the skills needed for their roles as future physicians, physician-scientists, and compassionate professionals working in our ever-expanding communities in the Bronx, across the country, and abroad.
