A poster symposium at the University of Calgary Foothills Campus on Friday highlighted local community work done by medical students and the challenges marginalized communities face when trying to seek care.
The two-week poster symposium is part of the University of Calgary Cumming School of Medicine’s Community Engaged Learning program, which placed medical students in local non-profit and charity-based organizations for a year. Students worked with community partners to learn about social determinants of health in Calgary, as well as the various barriers to affordable, high-quality health care.
The program is part of the school’s new Re-Imagining Health Education (RIME) initiative, which teaches medical students social accountability, clinical skills and anatomy. Around 39 local non-profit and charity organizations partnered with the University of Calgary for this program, most of which serve historically marginalized communities.
“The Class of 2026 was the first group to go through the longitudinal model of community-engaged learning, and that’s partially because they’re also the first class to go through the new RIME curriculum at the Cumming School of Medicine,” said Lisa Yeo. Yeo is a social accountability, governance and engagement manager at the University of Calgary’s Indigenous, Local And Global Office.
“The new curriculum allowed us to rethink community-engaged learning, and transform it into a longitudinal model, whereas previously we ran it in a short-term model of one week.”
Yeo hopes the program will teach students that health-care expertise isn’t limited to institutional knowledge and that there is a wealth of knowledge from local community organizations. She also hopes the placements will teach students valuable lessons that they can take into their future medical practices.
“When they do inevitably engage with or support patients who are facing these different types of issues or come from these different communities, they’ll be better able to meet their health needs in a way that’s appropriate for them,” she said.
“We hope that it’ll encourage them to go on and practice settings where we typically experience a shortage of doctors or barriers to access in terms of appropriate health care. It’s working to drive kind of those intrinsic motivations that they typically came into med school holding, and we’re hoping to reinvigorate that through the program so that they continue to carry that on in their future practice.”
Students, community partners had positive experiences
Linda Tata of Calgary Women’s Centre said the program was a positive experience for the organization, and the four medical students who worked at the centre helped build community initiatives. Students participated in women’s health workshops, especially those that focus on menopause and pre-menopause.
“It was great having them, and we are going to partner with the university again next year for sure,” she told LiveWire Calgary.
“I think our medical institution will really benefit from this and just understanding where people are coming from when they come to the offices and seek medical support, short term and long term. I hope that they gain an understanding of engaging with the community. I hope they gain an understanding of what it is that most community members and folks face when they’re out there. There’s a lot of things happening in our society, and most often, people are not aware of what’s happening until they get involved in it.”
Medical student Robyn Wells matched with The Brenda Strafford Foundation’s Kindness, Independence and Nurturing for Developmentally Disabled (KINDD) program at Clifton House, a long-term care facility for senior adults with developmental disabilities. She told LWC she tried to help the residents as much as she could, which broadened her perspective of health care.
“As a hopeful future physician, I’m going to take those lessons forward in my practice and focus on not only the medicine but the quality of life that we can offer in our roles and advocate for in our roles,” she said.
“I presented a painting today, and I wanted the painting to speak to the complexity of working with people within the aging population, specifically for adults with developmental disabilities. I think we need to have a broader understanding of what quality of life is. In those situations, it’s often more nuanced than we are taught in the classroom, and it’s only those one-on-one personal experiences that can give us those lessons to carry forward in healthcare.”
Wells said people who are interested in becoming students at Cumming School of Medicine must go into the program with an open mind, and be willing to learn, adapt and listen to the community partners.
“I think we need to take a step back and remember that we are here to serve in health care, and we need to remember to let our patients lead us, and I think that’s what these community-engaged learning programs are designed to do,” she said.
