Service Learning

Building and Sustaining Community Health Partnerships

The four-year longitudinal service-learning course at Albert Einstein College of Medicine is core to our mission of promoting health equity, social justice, and community engagement. All students in the M.D. program and dual M.D./Ph.D. program participate in this course, which fosters meaningful collaboration with community-based organizations that service the Bronx and surrounding communities. Students learn about the history, needs, and strengths of the Bronx, engage in active community service with local organizations, and participate in a dedicated curriculum for critical reflection, imparting the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to successfully engage with community-based organizations. The emphasis of Einstein’s service-learning course is on developing and sustaining community partnerships. All service activities are developed with community partners based on community-identified needs.

Interwoven into the medical school curriculum, the service-learning course offers students structured time to prepare for, reflect on, and connect their service-learning experiences to professional competencies, such as cultural humility, professionalism, communication, teamwork, and social responsibility. The service-learning course centers the importance of how understanding the impact of social and structural determinants of health shape and inform a physician’s ability to provide patient-centered care with cultural humility. Our students 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.

Goal and Vision

Our goal is to instill social responsibility into future physicians during their formative years, allowing them to immerse in the community to deepen their understanding of community resources and the social and structural determinants of health, as well as to cultivate relationships between Montefiore Einstein and the community it serves. Our vision is that students who graduate from Einstein will become physicians who demonstrate cultural humility and social responsibility, who understand and apply their knowledge about social and structural determinants of health to improve patient care, and who consistently engage in self-reflection with a growth mindset.

Service-Learning Curriculum

During the first year of medical school, Einstein M.D. students and dual M.D./Ph.D. students participate in a lottery and are matched with a community-based organization in one of 13 focus areas that align with their personal and professional interests:

advocacy and community health promotion
environmental justice and sustainability
exercise and active lifestyle
health education
homelessness and harm reduction
human rights and access to care
LGBTQ+ advocacy and support

mental and behavioral health
nutrition and healthy food access
reproductive justice
services and supports for people with disabilities
STEM engagement/professional development
youth mentorship

Students work in teams to complete 40 hours of service with their community-based organization over one year during the preclerkship phase of the M.D. curriculum. The end of the preclerkship phase culminates in a final handoff presentation, where second-year M.D. students share successes, lessons learned, and reflections about their year of service, passing information to the incoming first-year medical students who will sustain the service initiatives.

During clerkship year, all students prepare and implement a community health fair in collaboration with our community partners and complete an additional 20 hours of independent service. Students also have opportunities for service electives and additional community engagement during the professional development phase of the M.D. curriculum, including applying for the prestigious group Einstein Senior Leaders in Advocacy and Community Service. In total, all students complete a minimum of 60 hours of service across the four-year M.D. curriculum.

Albert Einstein College of Medicine Service-Learning Sites

View our catalog of service-learning sites for M.D. and M.D./Ph.D. students, including locations and site directors for more than 40 community-based organizations.

Site Catalog