Integrating Experiential Learning: A Community Medicine Toolkit for Health Promotion Aligned with Ottawa Charter Principles

Dear Editor, The National Medical Council defines, “Community Medicine is an academic subject, a branch of medicine which deals with the promotion of health and prevention of diseases, involving people’s participation, utilizing professional management skills.”1 Unlike Information, Education, and Communication, health promotion not only imparts awareness but also empowers a person to take the necessary action. Ottawa Charter is underlaid by WHO wherein 200 participants from 38 countries envisaged a framework for conducting health promotion activity.2 The three suggested strategies by the same are “enable” equitable healthcare, “mediate” through concerned stakeholders, and “advocate” political, economic, social, cultural, environmental, behavioral, and biological factor alleviation.2 Kolb’s experiential theory describes learning as starting with a “concrete experience,” leading to reflective observation, “abstract conceptualization,” and culminating in “active experimentation” for problem-solving.3 Capstone projects have, therefore, been utilized as a successful teaching pedagogy in public health.4 We have illustrated Community Medicine Educational Toolkit for Health Promotion as a sample Capstone Project in alignment with Kolb’ theory, Ottawa Charter, and the National Program for Prevention and Control of Cancer, Diabetes, Cardiovascular Diseases, and Stroke guidelines recommended opportunistic screening for cervical cancer in females aged 30 to 59 years5 Table 1.Table 1: Illustration of capstone project with stakeholder analysisCapstone projects can serve as mini-theses for students. While they are indispensable for quality, they can often be time-consuming. There is a need for research in the Indian context on the adoption of this teaching methodology and its efficiency and ease of inclusion in the curriculum. The future inclusion of a capstone project on health promotion as a prerequisite in the community medicine curriculum can help generate a task force with leadership abilities to effectively undertake health promotion. Financial support and sponsorship Nil. Conflicts of interest There are no conflicts of interest.