Collective Action for Health Equity: Community Centered Interprofessional Education

Overview: We provide a model for developing an interprofessional educational program on health equity for social work and health professions students, grounded in the theory of collective impact and centering community partnerships. Key program evaluation findings can inform future justice-focused educational efforts, particularly in low resource environments.Proposal text: Background

The COVID-19 pandemic is highlighting persistent health inequities in the United States and abroad, with traditionally marginalized groups disproportionately impacted by illnesses and death. In order to overcome inequities and work for greater justice, we need to train health professions students (including social workers, physicians, pharmacists, nurses, etc.) to understand and address social factors related to health, build and use effective collaborations, and work together to better care for all within our communities.

Interprofessional health equity educational efforts must overcome: siloed academic departments, marginalization of community voices, hospital-centric health delivery systems and medical model that privileges physician voices and assesses biological illness without attention to social and cultural factors. Although we live in a region with high needs and limited resources, we have a history of working together across universities and medical systems through a network developed in our regional workforce development board. Therefore, when a medical educator (SPM) brought forward the idea of an interprofessional health equity program, we had a place to start in leveraging already developed networks.

Using the collective impact framework (Kania & Kramer, 2011), our project set out to build a working group of academics, health care providers, and community social service leaders to create an interprofessional health equity educational program. Given that we are in a resource limited environment, the work we set out to accomplish could not be done by any one group or organization. The collect impact framework highlights the importance of shared agenda and measurement, backbone support organizations, and addressing power differentials in order to center equity (Kania et al, 2021). We implemented these principles by centering community members while using the health system and workforce development board as backbone support. We strove for an egalitarian working group structure, consensus decision making, and a shared vision of developing meaningful learning experiences for students. We developed a pilot program that focused on experiential learning. The program was intentionally flexible, hybrid, and endeavored to meet the learning needs of students while also addressing pressing needs of the community.

Methods
We undertook a mixed methods evaluation to explore the effectiveness of our working group, including group membership and structure, group dynamics and functioning, and curriculum development (interprofessional health equity). Data included working group notes and “exit tickets,” working group members’ responses to the Wilder Collaboration Factors Inventory (Mattessich and Johnson 2016) and review of pilot program curriculum.

Results
Key results include: high levels of commitment and shared goals among working group members, interprofessional curriculum that reflects general equity principles as well as the specific strengths and needs of the local community, and need for additional funding.

Conclusion
We provide a model for developing an interprofessional educational program on health equity for social work and health professions students, grounded in the theory of collective impact and centering community partnerships. Key findings inform our group’s efforts as we move beyond the pilot and can be used by others to develop their own projects, particularly in low resource environments.