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Healthcare, both for treating illness and supporting prevention and wellness, is increasingly based in local communities. Recruitment and retention of health professions graduates in primary care can be enhanced by well-designed work-based experiences, particularly in rural, remote, and underserved areas.  Community health centers can offer rich opportunities for hands-on, community/population-based learning, and particularly for inter-professional team-based learning in which health professions students can learn about, with, and from each other (e.g., medical, nursing, and allied health professions students learning and working as a team). 

In partnership with a statewide primary care organization, the authors have recently created an innovative, standardized model that includes a systematic approach to forming new academic-community partnerships for high quality, sustainable learning experiences in community health centers/settings.  Directors of all Federally Qualified Health Centers in one state (50 sites) and more than 30 primary care faculty members provided input and critique for finalizing this eight-step model.  Written as a “mentor in a manual,” the model includes many practical tools and resources that were created to facilitate success.  Feedback has been very positive. 

In this focus session, participants will be introduced to the model using interactive and hands-on activities.  They will also explore factors that can facilitate and hinder creating and sustaining new partnerships and community-based clinical learning experiences.  Lessons learned from the literature and implementation of the model will be shared.  All participants in the focus session will receive a CD containing the model and all of the associated tools and resource materials.