Methodology for community empowerment

Hello!! Welcome back to this session! Now I’m going to introduce you the methodology for community empowerment. The first is to learn narratives within communal lives. You got to be self reflexive. That is a conscious of social role of medical technologies. We rely on dynamics networking within the community. And also, remember, we needed to take a “power with approach.” We should let community leaders take the leadership. And we form collective projects with people in the community.

We build empathy with patients and problems through life experiences. To nurture the empowerment ability of the future medical professionals. We revitalize the roles of the past “organic intellectuals” and “specific intellectuals” who can articulate the needs of the community. Let “body politics” return to the control of the people, what today we call “therapy-seekers.”

We finally combine life hitory techniques, methods of community and group development, and transmission of professional knowledge to produce the specificity of the curriculum design.

There are dimensions of this curriculum development. The first is to apply life history technique. Secondly, we highlight the utilization of methods for community and the non-government organization development. And the finally, we want to transmission the professional sknowledge to the community. So… They are 2 stages of curriculum design. Program advanced, the first stage, is to proceed the courses through study in regular medical school classrooms. The second stage of courses includes the summer vacation time in-field practice in which students and teachers from all schools can participate, with academic credit given by home school. The special feature of the curriculum is the coordination between the two stages of the program.

The program called stage 1 is a classroom courses. For example, there are community life history for individual. And there are community life history focus upon social groups. And there are institutional history as a content, such as, those courses take practice in the ENT (ear, nose and throat section) and other clinical section in hospitals or medical centers. There are courses related to the miracle of Taiwan’s public health system. Let’s bring the history in public health to the students’ knowledge. And also there are concepts of community health should be introduced. And the life history methodology should be an essential part in this kind of course design.

So… In the summer time, we develope community health building comp volunteer raining. You can see the professors from Taipei Medical University and Kaohsiung Medical University, even Kaohsiung Normal University are joined together, to form a teaching staff team for the community courses. And the summer course is in the community. There are oral history courses related to community volunteer experiences. There are community oral history projects focus upon social groups. We have a social history of the local medical practice. Such in a small city in the northern part of Taiwan, Chiayi. We have oral history of local medical practice in Taipei Community Health Centers. Also, we lead students to identify practical experiences in psychiatric rehabilitation, such as, in the Yuli Veterans Hospital. So…

We also extend the student experiences to cover the indigenous people in tribal area.

For example, this course is in a remote area where a large mental hospital located. Students take a few words as press and learning from patients and the professional experiences over there. Here you can show students from Taipei Medical University “humanities in medicine” meeting psychiatic patients at Yuli Veterans Hospital. Also, neighborhood head of Donghua Li, Peitou, Taipei, who is a very important community leader in Taipei, is explaining community condition to participant teachers and students.

The students then form groups to discuss the volunteer work plans with the neighborhood head and his team. So… Those are very important curriculum design combine field work based upon what you have learn in the schools and in the community service practices.