This course covers the application of basic principles of community medicine, epidemiology and biostatistics through four (4) community residency programs. A community will be selected by the CFCS secretariat program in which each group of students will be placed in a specific community for three (3) to five (5) days in each residency with the following objectives:.
I. During Community Residency 1, students will conduct a household survey to produce the community health profiles. Students will use a standard set of questionnaires prepared by CFCS program for the purpose.
II. During Community Residency 2, based on the findings from the survey in CR 1, students will carry out specific studies to examine in detail the most prevalent health and social problems found in their host communities. It is usual that students focus on areas such as maternal and child health, school and adolescence health, women’s health, geriatric health, occupational and environmental health, nutrition, communicable diseases and non-communicable diseases. Under academic supervision, each group of students determine their own study design, research methodology and data collection strategies. Commonly, questionnaire-based study on health knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) of target populations on the major health problems will be conducted. This provides the quantitative assessment of the community diagnosis.
III. During Community Residency 3, the students will implement community health intervention projects on the health problems discovered and studied in the previous residencies. During the interventions, students will also carry out medical examinations, conduct health exhibitions, hold forums and discussions and may even conduct face to face health education to promote health. Besides mobilising local resource people such as community leaders, students will also garner support from local health clinics, government agencies, NGOs and the private sectors. Apart from the outputs and immediate outcomes, a particular feature emphasised is the sustainability of the projects so that the community may sustain them when students leave the area.
IV. During Community Residency 4, students will conduct another study to evaluate the outputs and immediate outcomes (less on impact) plus potential sustainability of the intervention projects conducted during the CR 3. The students are then required to give present about their projects plus the evaluation in a multimedia presentation as well as in a written report.
