Our group consists of Sandy Thai, Aneisah Saleh, Lidya Tesema, and Celia Berk. 

What did you do? 

During this quarter, we created a PSA addressing domestic violence specifically targeting those from rural communities that reside among the Methow Valley/in Okanogan County. In our PSA we addressed the various perspectives of domestic abuse and depicted the different forms of domestic abuse. We also emphasized that it is necessary for perpetrators of domestic violence to also seek help as well as victims. 

What is the potential public health impact of this project?

The potential public health impact of this project may be that there is a decreased incidence of domestic abuse and domestic violence victims may be able to access support. There may be improved physical and mental health outcomes among communities and individuals impacted by this PSA. Our goal in creating this PSA is to potentially draw more awareness to issues such as domestic violence in more rural areas and to let victims know that there is local help available. We also believe that this project contributes to removing the stigma around domestic violence to prevent victims from suffering in hiding. This can serve as a springboard for victims to report domestic violence incidents in the community and empower them to seek help.

What did you learn about public health practice from your final capstone project?

We learned the importance of considering all individual's limitations and barriers. For example, some may not be able to read, so we spoke slowly and clearly in order for those individuals to grasp our message. Others may not have access to this PSA due to the inability to obtain internet access and unfortunately we were unable to address that but we did consider that as a limiting factor. We also learned about the importance of addressing sensitive public health issues in a respectful and mindful way to be the most effective. Creating PSAs on public health issues calls for care and regard in how we relay the information and awareness in how our audience might receive the information to make for the best public health outcomes. When created effectively in this way, PSAs can contribute to public health campaigns and to creating connections between public health practice and community. Public health exists to serve the general public and in many ways serves a purpose to create links between fields of research–such as epidemiology, SDH, biostatistics, global health, and health services and sciences–and community. 

Location: Seattle, WA

Capstone Site: ROOTS & Mary's Place 

What We Did: For our capstone project, we did a social media campaign by creating an Instagram account called UWCADV (UW Campus Against Domestic Violence). We chose to do an Instagram account because we believed that this was an efficient and effective way to share digestible information to a large audience in a very engaging manner. UWCADV served to educate and inform people about the intersectionality of domestic violence and homelessness, particularly amongst women. We focused on women and domestic violence because we noticed that they were typically underrepresented in homelessness research and we believe that no one should ever decide between living in an abusive household or experiencing homelessness. As public health students, we believe that housing and living a life free from violence are basic human rights. On our Instagram account, we shared information regarding why the association between homelessness and domestic violence exists. We also shared information about what this issue looks like in Washington, more especially in King County; and we also shared housing resources that victims can access. Our group also aimed to create partnerships with organizations advocating for the same issue and the same populations. For example, UWCADV collaborated with a student-run organization at UW called HACK (Health Advocacy for Care and Kindness). HACK also intends to serve women experiencing homelessness, so we thought it would be great to collaborate with them through partnered advocacy and fundraising promotions. In addition to collaborating with other organizations, we also engaged with the community. We interviewed colleagues regarding what they knew about the association between homelessness and domestic violence to gauge how well this issue was understood. We also spoke with members of the communities we served at our capstone sites to understand how we, as public health students and future practitioners, can better serve them in the future. We wanted to know more about their journey and learn more about what they needed and wanted so that we can implement these resources in future policies/organizations. Additionally, we also did a Pecha Kucha (chit chat in Japanese), about our advocacy project, what we learned, and what we want our community to do moving forward.

Public health impact of this project: Domestic violence and homelessness are topics that are often stigmatized or misinterpreted. Victims of domestic violence don’t report their assault because they are fearful of the responses they may get. For example, they may be blamed for their own assault, ridiculed and asked “why didn’t you leave in the first place?,” or further victimized. Similarly, people experiencing homelessness are stereotyped and misrepresented. They are typically associated with being lazy, substance abusers, dirty or unstable. However, we want to change that perception and direct people to understand the root causes of homelessness which are social determinants of health that are perpetuated by the systemic policies that promote inequity. Ultimately, we hope that by raising awareness of these issues and how they are associated, and spreading the knowledge that we have acquired through our research and undergraduate study as public health students; domestic violence and homelessness will become destigmatized. Through this, we also hope to expand the community that advocates for and empowers individuals experiencing homelessness and the victims of domestic violence. As the community grows, we sense that our voices will be louder and that it encourages changes to happen within the system to promote equity. 

What we learned about public health practice: From our final advocacy project, we learned that implementing equity in personal and professional spaces requires a willingness to learn and shift your mindset through active engagement and reflection. Understanding the root causes of why these inequities exist and understanding our positionality helps us become more aware of this multi-layer problem and how to effectively support affected individuals. We often come from privileged positions. Thus, it is imperative that we acknowledge this and come to understand that although we have many solutions to propose, they may not always be the right solutions. Approaching these problems by cultivating a relationship with the community is necessary to provide them with what they need and want. After all, as public health students and future practitioners, we intend to serve the community. And the best way to serve that community is by centering them in our work and speaking with them with the intent to learn and understand. 

Public Health Impact: Our goal with these workshops was to empower bystanders to act in the case of an emergency. Learning when it is necessary to call 911, recognizing symptoms of stroke, and being able to perform CPR are all life saving skills, which if utilized, could potentially reduce mortality rates from these adverse health outcomes. Additionally, VPSI actively works to reduce the racial disparities that exist in who receives bystander care and who survives heart attacks and strokes. By sharing this information, we hoped to actively reduce these disparities, as information about bystander importance can be shared among whole communities. Empowering our audience members to feel comfortable in a bystander situation also empowers them to share that information with others, creating a web of more informed individuals that could potentially save lives. 

What We Learned: Through this work, we realized the importance of communication as well as community-centric public health practice. By conducting a workshop, we not only shared information with our participants, but we gave them the power to share that same information with their social circles. Connecting with people first hand and sharing health information can help create informed communities that are able to support each other in times of crisis. Therefore, learning how to adapt information to specific communities in a way that inspires the sharing of knowledge was an essential lesson that we will always consider within our future public health roles. 

“So service like wow you know, whatever you call it the whole idea of going out as healthcare students into the community and engaging. The community members meet people where they are. Yes, is, it's made all the difference in the world.”- White Male, mid-late 40s who attends the University of Washington School of Pharmacy.

Capstone Site: ROOTS Young Adult Homeless Shelter

Our podcast is dedicated to exploring the quality  and accessibility of healthcare within the homeless youth population in Seattle. Our service piece for the past and current quarter has been dedicated to serving the youth at the ROOTS Homeless Shelter located on Greek Row, where we help with mostly food and cleaning services as well as provide companionship for the guests. Stemming from our conversations with guests, we determined that there is a gap that intersects with both quality and accessibility of healthcare here in Seattle. Slowly, as a group, we discussed, many ways where we could attack both issues through our advocacy action, some examples included creating a flier with different programs offered in Seattle, working alongside some of the medical professionals at the UW Hospital that come over to the shelter once a week to provide healthcare services, etc. Eventually, we landed on contacting our District’s Senators to help create, support and vote on bills that address the quality and accessibility to healthcare among homeless youth. We think this would be a more effective advocacy action as these are both issues that are more upstream. We also want to urge others to do the same. 

For this project, we  gathered information from people who have experienced homelessness or those who work closely with them. We combined this information with research to propose actions that our peers can take to support better healthcare access for unhoused populations. 

The goal of our advocacy action is to have people use the email template we created and to reach out to the representatives and demand change. This would result in upstream, policy level changes that can have a meaningful impact on this issue.

We were given tools in recognizing and going against Racism in our spaces, and how the intentions of PH towards equity and health requires the active anti-racism engagement from us. The classes in the major following this, the core series of PH classes, would help us realize the scope of PH and the importance of its work, but with these we were further shown, through the Determinants of Health and more so the Social Determinants of Health (SDoH), that racism is a large barrier in the way of reaching social justice and equity in health. We then learned of the many areas that PH reaches and how interdisciplinary and vast it is, from nutrition to environmental to occupational to behavioral to diseases and on, and on. PH research and practice reaches far into multiple academia. Each class would take their subjects in PH and critically think on how racism (and the other -isms) affect health and our current best-practices in acting against them, from looking at equality, equity, and justice; to how PH has moved to actively working towards equity & social justice; to recognizing if policies also work towards this; to recognizing it in research; through critical service learning (in capstone!); reflexive practices & positionality; intersectionality; and so much more. It has been well placed in our minds that our major and our work needs to be actively centering around equity and social justice, and how to go about doing that.

We are hoping to take these tools and knowledge into whatever area of the vast PH field we may end up in! The practices mentioned previously are just a few of the active ways to go about PH centered in equity & SJ, but also the very important recognition of the SDoH and how those affect health, not just in the biomedical model idea of health.

"Students are interested in these programs in these professions, because we do want to help people, we want to feel like we are doing good in the world or helping individuals with their goals are helping on a larger scale with public health, we want to do good. And this is an opportunity to do that, and again like it uses the skills that we're currently learning.” (401)

“I think like embed this into existing degree programs. Like you know some students have required service-learning hours and some don't. Yeah, I think that's one way. I think paying students, when possible, should always be like a high priority.” (2031)

Building on the work of students in AUT 2021, our section partnered with CHISE, the Center for Health Sciences Interprofessional Education, Research, and Practice, to conduct a needs assessment for the Interprofessional Service Learning program amongst the health science schools. Over the course of two quarters, we planned, organized, and implemented a needs assessment based on qualitative research methods. We conducted one-on-one interviews with faculty, staff, and some students across the health science schools who have participated in interprofessional service learning, questions ranged from benefits and challenges of interprofessional service learning (IPSL)/education(IPE), what their experience has been like participating in it, and what they want to see in the future for IPSL/IPE. After conducting interviews, we cleaned the transcripts, created a codebook, analyzed all of the data from both capstone groups, and created a needs assessment report of our findings for CHISE to present to the Deans of the health science schools. Our group specifically worked on interviewing participants, cleaning transcripts, coding of transcripts, data analysis, and reporting a write up of the results for this section. Our focus was on the benefits and outcomes of Interprofessional Service Learning that participants mentioned in their interviews. The goal of this project is to identify areas of needs, improvements, and benefits of the program CHISE offers to support future healthcare providers and the patients they will serve. 

CHSIE’s main goal is to support Interprofessional service learning here at the University of Washington. We found that one of the many benefits of Interprofessional education is improved collaboration between students and faculty from different health fields. This will allow the students to work together more effectively wherever they work in the future which improves the treatment that their patients will receive. Therefore, by our group focusing on the benefits of the CHSIE program we can help them to make sure that they continue to do things that the participants are liking. This will make it so more healthcare students participate in CHSIE and the values of interprofessional education are spread which will continue to improve the lives of patients.

After assessing the common elements to our code, we found that both students and faculty members felt that hands-on learning with patient’s from the community lead to improvements in patient care and teamwork building amongst interprofessional programs. By placing students in a collaborative space with peers from different professional backgrounds, students had to navigate interprofessional relationships, practice good communication, and develop gratitude for the skills of their peers. The teamwork that manifested amongst health students of different schools was a realized necessity and inevitability of patient care. In this interprofessional and hands-on space, students were not only able to apply their classroom knowledge of healthcare, but they were also able to learn from the practices of different health professional students. We found many examples of medical students relying on the drug knowledge of pharmacy students and eventually up-taking that knowledge into their own skill set. This cross-exchange of knowledge helped students deepen their understanding of health sciences and develop flexibility in their field, which improved the overall quality of patient care. 

We also found improvements that could be made such as dispelling healthcare interprofessional hierarchy. Many students and faculty within the health sciences felt that medical students received greater learning opportunities and interprofessional service learning gave a lot of space to the field of medicine. Faculty specifically noted the obvious power hierarchy in departmental decision making, with greater administrative power in the School of Medicine. This power dynamic impacted the distribution of service learning across health professional schools. Health sciences faculty aim to mitigate this challenge by spreading awareness for these hierarchical differences and how this may be changed on the institutional level for more equitable power distributions. 

“The medical hierarchy, that has existed for hundreds of years, where the medical students are expected to lead and they need to have people take orders from them. In nursing and pharmacy you do what I tell you to do. And these things, this interprofessional education has caused in fact, forced medical schools are teaching in a way that says everyone needs to listen and everyone has an equal voice, this is not a vertical system is, we need to make it more horizontal.”- Faculty, School of Pharmacy 

“But I think the most significant outcome of all of this is that the experiences that the students have while volunteering at these clinics, the stories that they get to hear, stick with them. And I think in a lot of cases it’s those memories that push them to challenge their biases, challenge their assumptions, work to be more thoughtful and more trauma informed, and more intentional. And I think that’s the single most important thing that comes out of this work”- Faculty, School of Medicine

“I think that for the folks that we're serving I think it's Like I don't even know how to quantify it I think it's an invaluable benefit to them to have a team coming together to work around their care because, again, I think that it makes it just that much more comprehensive.I think that it can build more trust, where there is a whole lot of distrust in our medical systems.”- Student, School of Social Work

What did you learn about public health practice from your final capstone project? Something that we learned from our experience with the Department of Health and Seattle Fire was to think outside the box when trying to engage our audiences. This is especially important when thinking about who our audience likely is. It was a challenge at times to do our workshops with limited resources and understanding that our audience was mostly elderly and may not be very accustomed to technology. This meant that when thinking about resources for our workshop, we had to ensure that it is easy to use and flexible, no matter what kind of technology is available for us to use at the site. This is why we created worksheets from our visuals which we printed before our workshops. Thinking outside the box also was necessary when creating our non-verbal infographic for fall prevention. Initially, we had too many words because we struggled to create an infographic which did not have any words at all in a way that was effectively communicating what was necessary. However, after some constructive criticism by the community partners, we thought critically about what can best be communicated through this medium and creatively used graphics to communicate the messages we thought were most important and practically useful for our audience.

During our capstone, we focused on creating a report for the Center for Health Sciences Interprofessional Education, Research, and Practice (CHSIE) about the concept of Service-Learning and Interprofessional Service Learning. This included conducting interviews with faculty, staff, and students and editing our transcript. We focused on collaborative work during our second quarter to write a full report and analyze the data. Our team focused on the analysis aspect of the project, meaning we coded our transcript, identified critical themes by creating new codes, and compared and contrasted them based on role-specific and school-specific similarities and differences. We will consolidate and present our findings to CHSIE in one comprehensive report.

Potential Public Health Impact of this Project:

Our analysis showed that service learning could be identified as experiential learning, participating in learning through practice to build and strengthen communities. Regarding interprofessional service learning, our participants understood it as learning across disciplines by participating in cross-sector collaboration and reciprocating relationships to improve the accessibility and quality of care. Service learning opportunities focus on serving and strengthening underrepresented communities; often, these are the only opportunities where these communities feel seen and can receive adequate healthcare. Our interviewees also noted that involving themselves in service learning and/or interprofessional service learning was a transformative experience that allowed them to learn more about themselves, other disciplines, gaps in knowledge, and the community. From our research this quarter, CHSIE can continue to advance interprofessional education and improve its service learning courses to prepare our future health professionals. Overall, having students participate in service learning opportunities makes them better health care providers, which helps the communities they choose to serve because they can provide better health services and understand when team-based care is appropriate. 

Learning about Public Health Practice from our Final Capstone Project:

Service learning and interprofessional service learning contribute significantly to public health. Service learning adds to the skills and knowledge of public health professionals by teaching them a unique skill set that cannot be learned in a classroom. Students gain experience working with underserved populations while also learning how to handle team-based work. This capstone project expressed the importance of service learning and gave insight into the knowledge that faculty and students have about service learning. Service learning opportunities  are inherently valuable as it is essential in shaping public health individuals as professionals.

Quote:

“Interprofessional service-learning is where you not only give that opportunity [to both learn and serve] that I just described, but you're encouraging the connection and collaboration, kind of it's the beginning of that. So, the expectation is that when we enter into practice as professionals, that we will already have had some experience and some comfort built up in engaging with other disciplines, engaging with other professionals. And I feel like interprofessional service-learning is a great opportunity for students to start to share what they know already.” - Faculty, School of Social Work, Transcript ID 2022

Potential public health impact: This project allows the professional schools to develop a more equitable and student focused curriculum that will allow them to develop into competent health professionals. CHSIE has continued to support current students across departments to provide opportunities for students to engage in interprofessional service learning (IPSL). The collaboration component is what allows students to learn from each other across the different health departments and build connections, work together to learn from each other and best provide for patients/clients care and needs’. When students, staff and faculty have the opportunity to engage and collaborate with each other, there is a strong improvement in caring for the patients and clients these individuals work with.

What we learned: The importance of creating spaces for opportunities with students across diverse health departments. Creating equitable curriculums helps intake and develop students of diverse backgrounds and allows them to help each other become culturally competent and equitable providers. Recognizing COVID-19 as a barrier to IPSL amongst financial and institutional barriers helps overcome them. Hierarchy is another issue we learned about and the importance of addressing hierarchy in the healthcare workplace as a barrier to equitable treatment for patients. 

Media - Interview Quotes:  “I think I would emphasize the fact that the best service learning projects have been interprofessional. And I think that they have so much more to teach health sciences students, not only can they provide better service because they're interdisciplinary they also have the advantage of teaching the interdisciplinary aspects of healthcare and it helps students better understand their professional roles going forward and how they can inter relate to other healthcare professionals which I think of tremendous value so that's kind of the history.”

"I would say it might be like the feedback loop from teaching a course, getting feedback from the students, and then that sort of discussion that went back and forth that followed. And we ended up having some criticism from students. And so we brought in an outside sort of consultant and were able to dialogue with students. And it was really meaningful for both faculty and students.”

What is the potential public health impact of this project? This project's potential public health impact is the increase in individuals' knowledge about domestic violence. We want to provide survivors with resources that reinforce interventions or working toward them

What did you learn about public health practice from your final capstone project?
We learned that community-based learning is essential for public health practice, along with many women-oppressive systems that make it difficult for those experiencing domestic violence to seek any help. In the PSA, we want to address barriers such as fear of retaliation from the perpetrator and loss of social prestige due to negative stigma and religion. By going to Methow Valley we were able to develop trust and build more meaningful connections with the community. 

We conducted a social media campaign for our capstone project by generating flyers/infographics that we posted and shared on our Instagram profiles. These posters and infographics were designed to bring attention to the growing problem of LGBTQ+ youth homelessness. In addition, we intended to raise awareness about the homophobia and transphobia LGBTQ+ individuals face on the streets and how this extends to homeless shelters. We also contacted and requested that other UW RSOs share and repost our flyers. In addition to the social media campaign, we conducted an interview with a volunteer supervisor at ROOTS Young Adult Homeless Shelter to acquire a deeper understanding of how homophobia and transphobia manifest in homeless shelters like ROOTS. 

This can potentially impact public health in one to make it more clear how ROOTS are open to LGBTQ+ and that guests do not have to adhere to certain rules and behavior to fit in. So it makes a more inclusive environment that would encourage more people in this community to use these resources and get back on their feet. Secondly, hopefully, it would rally in more funding towards medical services (including Wednesday youth clinic) especially in areas of mental health since it would go a long way for this community. Lastly, it could help educate the community/guests who have more sexist views and help give them better resources to cope and react to situations better regarding sexualities to start and dismantle the discrimination and attacks. This would not only protect the victims more but it would also start creating a new culture within our system and break down the sexist, homophobic, and transphobic views. 

By conducting a social media campaign, we were able to learn and refine valuable skills for our future public health work, such as community outreach, reaching a marginalized target audience, using visual design to peak interest and educate the public, and conducting interviews on sensitive subjects. Additionally, working at ROOTS has helped us apply the frameworks learned in class to a physical setting. For example, using the Life Course Perspective framework, my group was able to gauge the associated social determinants of health and pathway that causes LGBTQ+ individuals to become homeless, such as the lack of societal support for young adults who are evicted from their homes, and transphobia and homophobia’s deep embedment in job industries. This deep understanding has allowed us to gain more familiarity with important concepts and the ways they work, such as intersectionality and the existence of systems of oppression at both the societal and local levels. We hope to continue our public health practice in the future by utilizing the previously mentioned skills and helping the public further recognize underrepresented populations, such as the homeless LGBTQ+ community. As ROOTS volunteers, we had the valuable opportunity to connect with an on-site supervisor, and collect shareable information related to the lived experiences of LGBTQ+ homeless individuals. This experience helped us to recognize the impact of networking, and the importance of working directly with the target population to help produce public health interventions, such as with our infographic.

2. Location:  Methow Valley in Okanogan County Wa

 

3. Our team created an infographic that was targeted toward policymakers to bring attention to the housing insecurity that youth are facing in the Methow Valley. We gathered information on the housing crisis that is facing the citizens of Okanogan Country as well as demographic data about those living in the area. We used this information to highlight the causes of the housing crisis, described those who are impacted, and the long-term health impacts of youth facing housing insecurity. Then we used this information to persuade policymakers to act and provided recourses on ways that they can do this.

 

 

4. The potential public health impact is to try and provide upstream recourses to combat the housing crisis that the citizens of Okanogan County are currently facing. By targeting policymakers, we hope to try and influence some of the structural factors driving the increasing housing insecurity in this population.

 

 

 

5. From this project, we learned about the multiple factors that are driving the housing crisis and how to think about issues like this from multiple different perspectives. By looking at the population of youth, we had to understand the specific challenges facing this population as it was different between all the populations that we focused on. This allowed us to focus on the life course perspective specifically, which highlights the ways that the housing crisis would impact youth throughout their lives as a reason why policymakers should take action. We also learned about how to communicate with policymakers, find information that is relevant to them and present it in a concise matter.

During the past two quarters, my group has decided to focus on and create an advocacy action plan addressing mental health and homelessness. Since May is Mental Health Awareness month, we thought it was fitting to create an infographic regarding information about the prevalence between adolescents in the United States and in comparison to youth experiencing homelessness. In our infographic we also included resources where individuals can download an app that is dedicated to mindfulness exercises (Mindful App), or a link that caters to those who want to attend free support groups in Seattle on mental health (NAMI Support Groups). We chose to post the infographic on our Instagram stories to maximize exposure about the issue, but we thought it would be a  great way to spread awareness while informing others on the interlink between mental health and homelessness.

Our intended beneficiaries of this public health campaign are adolescents of all backgrounds, including and especially young, unhoused adults. The resources that we included in our infographic were selected to be appropriate for people of those ages and accessible to low-income and unhoused people. In designing the infographic, we were aiming to increase awareness of Mental Health Month, the prevalence of mental health issues, and the significant impact of homelessness on mental health. We hope that part of the impact of our action is to decrease stigma in talking about these issues and finding resources for help. Another potential impact of our infographic is to suppress the feelings of isolation that come with mental health issues and provide a sense of shared struggle. In including the links to the Mindful App and the NAMI support groups, the intended impact was to connect our audience with low-barrier mental health tools, so that they can have support that is cheap, does not require a large time commitment, and has no wait times– all of which are barriers that prevent people from utilizing therapy and other more intense mental health treatment.

During the course of the project, we learned that public health practitioners should follow the lead of organizations that are already engaging in public health practice. This realization was insightful because as we prepare for careers in public health, it is beneficial to understand there are people already working to address the health issues occurring within their communities. It would be impertinent and ineffective to enter a community and instruct how to solve the work they have already been confronting long before our arrival. Thus, when working with a community to develop an intervention that promotes and protects their health, we should integrate their progress and culture into our baseline. Additionally, raising awareness of the resources that are available to community members is helpful because that can empower them to realize that they can have an impact on their health. 

Capstone Sites: Roots Young Adults Homeless Shelter & Mary’s Place 

We chose to launch a social media campaign with various infographics to focus on mental health and substance abuse within the homeless/houseless population. For the current and past quarters, we have been dedicating our time each week by volunteering relentlessly at the homeless shelter. Some of the work we did at the shelter included food distribution, shelter preparation, providing companionship to our guests, etc. Through the research we have done online and volunteer training at the shelter, we learned that the inadequate access to mental health treatments and the stigma surrounding mental health issues are strongly correlated with substance abuse within the homeless population in Seattle. Therefore, to tackle these issues through our social media campaign, we as a group decided to raise awareness of the systemic barriers that prevent the homeless population from getting the proper mental health and substance abuse treatments they deserve. In the end, we also advocated in our social media campaign for funding of various homeless programs, drug rehab programs, and accessible mental health services to provide an equitable and inclusive environment for the homeless population. To wrap up our advocacy action, we will eventually do a Pecha Kucha presentation in front of our capstone section to summarize what we did throughout the two quarters and what individuals and communities can do to provide a stigma-free and equitable environment for the homeless population. 

For the short-term impact, we want to raise awareness of the systemic barriers and stigma that prevent the homeless population from seeking mental health and substance abuse treatments as our first step. Our target audience in our social media campaign is mainly college students. And a lot of times, the misunderstanding and micro-aggression students hold toward the homeless community can cause the population implicit harm. We want to dismantle the stigma that students have and educate them to stop blaming the individuals for their failure and put more focus on systemic failure. Also, the resources provided online with accessible mental health clinics, rehab programs, and various shelter programs can hopefully help those who are currently seeking help and dealing with homelessness. For the long-term impact, we want our social media campaign to lead to potential policy and grassroots change with more people advocating for the homeless population's rights at the community and legislative levels.


What did you learn about public health practice from your final capstone project?

The concept that we applied to our action plan is the life course perspective that examines the health trajectory of an individual’s life influenced by the intersectionalities that they may identify with. We found it challenging for the homeless population to provide for their essential needs in life due to their economic status. As a result, the homeless population is highly susceptible to poor physical and mental health due to being directly exposed to weather and environmental toxins living in a city. As one of the upstream factors, substance abuse often can also accompany mental health issues in the homeless population. Economic stability, lack of access to mental health treatments, and rehab centers alongside the poor environment compose the social determinants of health that prevent the homeless population from being healthy at systemic levels. One of the most important things we learned from this capstone project is that we should not blame the individual for their homeless status but instead focus on and remove the systemic barriers that prevent the community from receiving the proper care they need.

 

What We Did: Over these past two quarters, our section’s efforts have been dedicated to executing a needs assessment for the Center for Health Sciences Interprofessional Education, Research, and Practice (CHSIE) regarding its current interprofessional service learning (IPSL) offerings. First, we individually conducted interviews with UW faculty/staff and students from the six Health Sciences schools who were involved with CHSIE. Then, we transcribed, analyzed, and coded the interviews both individually and in groups. As we are working together on a final report, our team is focusing on a sub-section of the Results section pertaining to identifying challenges that faculty/staff and students face when it comes to implementing an IPSL program, and participating in an IPSL opportunity.

 

CHSIE fosters the interprofessional education of students from the six UW Health Sciences and healthcare professionals. Within the program, they provide opportunities for students to work closely with students and professionals from other health science fields where they can practice their interprofessional communication skills, gain hands-on experience, and exchange knowledge (e.g., frameworks, perspectives, etc.). Based on input on the current IPSL offerings, CHSIE will be able to provide UW Health Sciences students with more meaningful opportunities, allowing them to better learn and collaborate with others from other professions. With improved IPSL offerings, students from different professions will be able to work together more effectively and efficiently which should hopefully improve the quality of care, increase patient health outcomes, and leave a positive public health impact.

 

Through working on the needs assessment with CHSIE, we have learned the importance of IPSL to not only faculty/staff and students affiliated with CHSIE but also the communities they are working with. Through participating in IPSL, faculty/staff and students are able to share knowledge and skills from their own professional experiences with each other. Working with CHSIE has also taught us the importance of service learning with intention, mindfulness, and reflecting on how we can improve and what we have learned.

Through our partnership with CHSIE, we have had the opportunity to learn how to collect qualitative data to better understand the benefits and challenges of IPSL perceived by both faculty/staff and students. One takeaway from conducting qualitative research was learning how to capture experiences that aren’t accounted for in quantitative research. While coding, we used data from the interviews to identify themes in the challenges and barriers of implementing and participating in IPSL opportunities. This form of data collection is an important component of public health research, as it provides more context and detail than traditional quantitative methods.

On our team, we specifically learned about the challenges and barriers that were faced regarding implementation and participation in IPSL. A couple common themes that emerged were scheduling conflicts, financial priorities, lack of information about opportunities, transportation challenges, and lack of personal fulfillment. Many of these themes may occur in other public health programs and organizations. Understanding why people don’t participate in IPSL could contextualize why people may have reluctances to become involved in other public health service learning options.  

 

“There are certain things that are considered your currency in academia is your research right like that's really what people care about so research and what you publish and how many research dollars you bring in, that's the real currency and service-learning is not anywhere near that list anywhere. Teaching is not seen as important either so it's like you're teaching evaluations, though important right they're not as important as how many publications you have and in what journals you’re in. There's no real incentive for people to do service learning and put it in their classes.”

“The need to pay your way through school is a barrier for a lot of people. Other people might just not you know not getting connected, or perhaps the projects don't resonate with their particular interest or the service they will then you know the way they want to be present in the community.”

“Interprofessional collaboration is still a pretty new concept and there's a lot of people who are still holding on to that old idea of you know, the doctor being the leader and what the doctor says goes and that sort of thing. And so, while we do get plenty of the theoretical aspect in the first year and a half, it's been a bit hard to keep that in mind, just due to the forces that we have to deal with as medical students.”