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Partnership projects aid underserved areas by Dick Peterson Public Relations An old idea has come of age in a College of Health Professions grant to create community-campus partnerships in medically underserved areas. The partnerships expand the learning experiences of students and promise a degree of parity in health care services in the Lowcountry. Dr. Serena Seifer, third from right, meets with representatives from Lowcountry AHEC, the Lowcountry Polio Survivor Network and the MS Support Group. “It’s an emerging area of scholarship,” said Department of Rehabilitation Sciences’ Holly Wise, Ph.D. While community partnerships may trace an ancestry to medical apprenticeships and teaching hospitals for indigent care, they now propose opportunities for community residents, students, and faculty to work together for mutual benefit. “Scholarship is research, teaching and, in this case, community engagement,” Wise explained.  Funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration, the allied health project training grant, Community Connections: Partners for Service and Learning (1D37 HP 00876), is about to enter its third and final year. The overarching goals of the grant are to expand interdisciplinary training sites in medically underserved areas for occupational therapy, physical therapy, and speech-language pathology students and to foster reciprocal relationships between academic and community partners to promote delivery of needed allied health services in the Lowcountry region of South Carolina. Dr. Maralynne Mitcham MUSC’s Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, the Lowcountry Area Health Education Center, and 27 community organizations partnered to deliver 11 community projects across 10 of the 12 Lowcountry counties. “To date, these partnerships have resulted in several hundred community-based learning experiences for students, involving more than a thousand members of the communities,” said the grant’s principal investigator Maralynne D. Mitcham, Ph.D. “This gives us the ability to reach out with a program that meets needs in the community, that is anchored to our students and their curriculum, and still fulfills the scholarly interests of faculty,” Mitcham said. Those scholarly interests include research, with carefully planned interventions and outcome measurements to determine a project’s degree of success. “It’s get a grip, think it through, do it well, and ask ‘Did it work?’” Mitcham said. The three constituent groups—MUSC’s Rehabilitation Sciences Department, Lowcountry AHEC and each local community organization—foster interdependence in achieving community-based learning experiences for the students, while providing needed allied health services in the community and eventually creating healthier communities. Wise explained that the full participation of the three groups in each local project makes this a dynamic and comprehensive system of community partnerships. As part of the annual faculty colloquium for the grant, the University of Washington's Serena Seifer, M.D., visited MUSC April 26-27 to consult with Wise, Mitcham, and others involved in the grant and its partnerships.  She provided the stimulus to “reflect on the nature of the relationships we have formed, assess their potential for sustainability, and develop strategies for long-term relationships,” Mitcham said.  Seifer is executive director of Community-Campus Partnerships for Health, a non-profit organization that promotes health through partnerships between communities and higher educational institutions. That mission is advanced primarily through infor-mation dissemination, train-ing and technical assistance, research and evaluation, policy develop-ment and advocacy, membership development, and coalition building. “Dr. Seifer served as a catalyst for the next year of our grant,” Wise said. “She met with other community partners, learned more about the grant, and helped us with ways we can interface with groups and establish more partnerships.” As a result, Wise expects an increase in clinical training sites in medically underserved areas. Seifer met with representatives from Lowcountry AHEC, the Lowcountry Polio Survivor Network, and the MS Support Group of Summerville to determine from the community's perspective how well the community-campus concept was working. The meeting gave Seifer an unimpeded evaluation of the effectiveness of the grant faculty as mentor-partners with community groups. Seifer sought to learn the strengths of the relationships and the areas in which improvements can be made. “We discovered,” Wise said, “the importance of giving the community partners the opportunity to interact with each other.” She said that the community partners would like more information about the grant and the variety of ways the university partners with community groups, including partnerships established by the other colleges and the university. “We hope to achieve better communication and education with our established partners during the final year of the Community Connections grant,” Wise said, “possibly through a forum format in collaboration with the other MUSC colleges.” With two years of the three-year grant behind them, Mitcham and Wise can see that the Community Campus Partnerships are beneficial to everyone involved.  “The Community Conn-ections grant was designed to establish partnerships that would meet the needs of residents living in medically underserved areas and expand oppor-tunities for occupational therapy, physical therapy, and speech-language pathology students and faculty to engage in interdisciplinary, community-based learning experiences,” Wise said. The learning experiences range from the musculoskeletal screening of high school athletes to the promotion of health, wellness, and fitness for individuals with a disability.  Wise said the Community Connections Steering Committee conceptualized the use of grant-supported, faculty development activities as a springboard for the scholarship trajectory of the junior faculty. The Community Connections grant provided a collaborative environment that enables individuals to establish a defining focus for their scholarship activities.  Ongoing grant meetings provide opportunities to gain additional skills and knowledge necessary for faculty to identify strategies to transform service-learning activities into career-building assets. Allied health project grants offer a mechanism to simultaneously serve the needs of the community and help strengthen the workforce in underserved areas.       Friday, June 11, 2004 Catalyst Online is published weekly, updated as needed and improved from time to time by the MUSC Office of Public Relations for the faculty, employees and students of the Medical University of South Carolina. Catalyst Online editor, Kim Draughn, can be reached at 792-4107 or by email, catalyst@musc.edu. Editorial copy can be submitted to Catalyst Online and to The Catalyst in print by fax, 792-6723, or by email to petersnd@musc.edu or catalyst@musc.edu. To place an ad in The Catalyst hardcopy, call Community Press at 849-1778.