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With advanced medical treatment, many children struggling with cancer survive. But prolonged care often means they miss out on much of the social side of being a kid. This is where community initiatives like Camp Oochigeas – an organization providing summer camp experiences and recreational programming for kids with cancer, even during chemotherapy – step in.

“Programs like this are integral to help support people,” says Laura Burgess, a second-year medical student who has spent the past year collaborating with Camp Oochigeas staff members to collect and summarize the studies done on the camp’s impact. The document is intended as a resource for outreach and a foundation for future research. “Physicians are focused on medical treatment, but there’s so much more this population needs.”

Burgess spoke about the camp and her experiences to medical school colleagues, as well as community partners, at a community forum held last week at U of T. As part of a new medical course called Community, Population and Public Health (CPPH), first- and second-year students are partnered with Toronto community organizations that support health in a variety of ways. The aim is to explore the social determinants of health though a service-learning experience.

Community engagement is an important facet of the new Foundations Curriculum, which encourages an integrated approach to medical education. At the U of T event, second-year students shared their experience and reflected on how it might make them better physicians.

One student helped develop health and wellness seminars for seniors at the Bob Rumball Centre for the Deaf. Another pair worked with front-line Children’s Aid Society of Toronto workers to create a list of income supports their clients may qualify for. Others worked with groups involved in housing for the homeless, childhood development, nutrition, diabetes education, rehabilitation and more.

“The community forum gives students the opportunity to share their experiences with their colleagues, faculty and community partners and highlights the role of partners and resources in the community,” says course director Dr. Allison Chris, a family physician and public health and preventive medicine specialist. “Students and community partners have the opportunity to reflect on the experience together.”

For Roxanne Wright, the course’s community health placement officer, it is important for students to get out of regular health care settings and into the community. “When you get into other contexts, you realize how you can really listen to people and lend your voice in a way that makes sense to them,” she says.

Burgess is not sure how much of an impact her work with Camp Oochigeas will have. “In the grand scheme of things, they do so much for the patients, families and communities they work with,” she says. Ultimately she hopes she and her colleagues will be better attuned to community resources and able to connect patients to supportive networks.