MD ID 6690 - RUUTE Community Engagement Experience (CEE)

The RUUTE Community Engagement Experience (CEE) is an opportunity for medical students to gain hands-on clinical learning for a longer period of time than medical students typically get during their first and second years of medical school. During this course, medical students will travel to a rural and/or underserved location in Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, or Montana to complete hands-on learning with providers of different specialties. Students will also participate in volunteer opportunities within the community. Additionally, they will be required to gather community specific data (community assets, demographics, epidemiology) and complete community interviews to identify a pressing health concern in their community. Through the knowledge learned from these experiences, medical students will create and disseminate a community deliverable/intervention that addresses the public health concern they identified. At the completion of the experience, they will develop a poster presentation that reflects their community data and intervention that will be presented later in the fall during a research symposium. Various assignments will be completed (described below) to draw deeper into the students’ experience as a health professional in rural and/or underserved communities and to help them develop their community deliverable/intervention. Community deliverable topics will come out of a community assessment and may focus on any number of public health topics, including: physical health (e.g. diabetes), behavioral health (e.g. substance use disorders), social determinants of health (e.g. income level), and emerging issues (vaccination resistance). 1 Summary of Course Components: 1. Complete hands-on clinical learning 2. Volunteer in the community 3. Investigate and create a community deliverable, which the student will implement/propose to the community 4. Once the CEE experience is completed, the student will reflect on their experience and create a poster presentation to summarize their intervention in the community *(See Course Format and Schedule for More Detailed Information on Course Components) Much of our inspiration for the CEE Program is from University of Washington’s Rural/Underserved Opportunities Program (RUOP). RUOP leadership was instrumental in sharing their course curriculum to help shape the CEE experience at the University of Utah School of Medicine. 1