Challenges and Solutions for Service-Learning Health Coaches

September 15, 2014
Trang Le, a Student Health Coach, role plays working with a community member to better understand how to manage his health information.

Trang Le, a Student Health Coach, role plays working with a community member to better understand how to manage his health information.

Trang Le, a Student Health Coach, role plays working with a community member to better understand how to manage his health information.
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Author
Michelle Kelly

Michelle Kelly, Department of Nursing, Guest blogger of Part 3 of 3 Sonoma State University faculty who presented at the 17th Annual Continuums of Service Conference.

We were thrilled to present our community collaboration at the Continuums of Service Conference. Linda Allen, Social Worker at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, Trang Le, Nursing student health coach, and Michelle Kelly, Associate Professor in Nursing outlined the benefits of keeping a Personal Health Record as well as the importance of speaking up and asking questions and one's health. Participants planned how to implement health coaching into a service-learning course to serve their perspective communities.

We presented a Health Coach service-learning model currently used in a SSU Community Public Health Nursing course. Students are placed at community agencies and mentored to serve the public as Health Coaches. The Health Coach model is a novel and several of the conference participants have contacted us after the conference to discuss their ideas on implementing a Coach program.

We learned about the many challenges and innovative solutions participants had in implementing learning activities that had value to the community. Service-learning for pre-health students can be particularly challenging as pre-health students are in science courses and have not had the coursework for direct care roles.

Beyond our conference session, we learned:

  1. service-learning is a highly valued by students, communities and faculty
  2. service-learning experiences can be simple and easily implemented
  3. ongoing communication between educational institutions and community partners is imperative to find common agendas
  4. service-learning courses are an excellent mechanism for real world experiences and workforce preparation for students of all ages

See the first and second part of this three part series.