Service-Learning in Healthy Aging for Medical Students and Family Medicine Residents

INTRODUCTION: Community-based educational opportunities can diversify and strengthen traditional clinical education. With growing diversity of patient populations and increasing life expectancy, it is imperative that medical students and residents prepare for practice within this context. The Center for Healthy Communities in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin, USA developed a community-based, service-learning program in healthy aging to address this need. OBJECTIVES: The goals of the Chat and Chew program are to: generate medical student/ resident awareness of community health, aging, and diversity; train medical students/ residents to present health information to older, minority community members; encourage medical students/residents to view community members as "teachers" as well as patients; and provide needed health information and socialization opportunities to elderly public housing tenants. IMPLICATIONS: Medical students and residents gain the opportunity to interact with community members about the health issues that concern them. They also benefit from seeing community members in their real life context and learning about their health-related experiences. The housing tenants help shape how future patients will be understood and treated by the physicians who participated in the service-learning program. The purpose of this article is to: (1) provide an overview of service-learning and the Chat and Chew program, including reflection components; and (2) discuss how this program has become an integral part of the family medicine residency curriculum.