Project Summary | Initiated in April 2000, the Community Health Initiative by University Students (CHIUS)aims to provide interdisciplinary primary health care, community services referral, and provision of information to Downtown Eastside (DTES) residents. Our objectives include:
- To provide UBC health care students with exposure to the complex social issues of an under-serviced, inner-city environment including alternative lifestyle choices, poverty, addiction, HIV/AIDS etc. In doing so, CHIUS aims to instil better understanding of such issues in future health providers and improve long-term service to members of such communities.
- To develop UBC health care students’ understanding of a “team approach” to health care delivery. Students are able to complement their undergraduate curriculum by learning from DTES residents, mentors, health care students from different years in their same discipline, and health care students from other disciplines.
- To expose and train students in valuable and organizational community development skills necessary in public health. Skills such as program design, implementation and evaluation, grant writing, and research provide students the training to become future leaders in community and public health.
- To learn how to provide open-minded, respectful, empathetic support. In doing so, the DTES residents have empowering, rather than alienating, health care encounters while students interact in an accepting environment that helps foster social awareness and deconstruct biases and stereotypes.
- To continually evaluate and improve the objectives, services and programs initiated by the CHIUS.
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Year 1: Team Members | Peter Granger, Family Medicine, Faculty of Medicine
David Hui, UBC Med '03, CHIUS Co-chair
Kristi Mardyn, UBC Med '03, CHIUS Co-chair
Joey Bonifacio, UBC Med '05, CHIUS Research and Funding Committee
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