Today’s healthcare professionals face increasingly profound challenges serving communities in need. Widening healthcare disparities and the need to work with complex, dynamic social infrastructures means there is an increasing need for healthcare professionals in training to develop critical, creative thinking for real-world problem solving and the ability to innovate to meet the needs of marginalised individuals and communities locally and globally.

At the heart of this service-learning programme is respect for human life, alleviating suffering and maintaining human dignity through community-based interventions. This programme is designed with the support of community partners, and provides platforms to nurture community-responsive and compassionate healthcare leaders of tomorrow.

Robust curriculum

Students will be taught cross-disciplinary skills and mentored by leaders in health humanitarianism outreach both locally and internationally. This curriculum lets students learn and grow as they serve others. Modules cover a broad range of relevant topics, including community project design, monitoring and evaluation training, community service leadership development, social innovation, global health and humanitarian action, compassion training, etc.

With the necessary knowledge and skills, students are then placed with community project teams. These projects provide them with opportunities to apply their learning under mentorship guidance. Students learn by active construction of ideas and design of projects, presenting these initiatives to pitch for support and funding, implementing the project, and then jointly reflecting upon and evaluating their work.

Programme revamp

The HHL Programme underwent a revamp in 2021 to include more diversified community service tracks such as Outreach, Education & Advocacy, and Capacity Building, thus going beyond Health Intervention projects. The programme was revised to align with the diverse community service tracks.

Health, Humanitarian & Leadership (HHL) Programme

Mission:
Helping students to make a significant and sustainable difference to health literacy, health awareness and health outcomes in local or international communities

Health Intervention

Outreach, Education & Advocacy

Capacity Building

Some HHL projects

New plans for HHL Programme

A new HHL Programme introduced in June 2022 is called HEARTS. Playlist. The acronym stands for Humanitarian, Empathy, Action, Reach, Transformation, and Service; these are core values that drive the efforts behind all HHL projects. The event held last year featured sharing sessions by student leaders of all the HHL projects of what was accomplished in the year (Year in Review), what went well, what did not go as well, lessons learned, and plans moving forward. The HEARTS playlist programme brought students together to learn from one another’s experiences. The event was timed to mark the end of each project cycle and foster reflective learning as the projects’ leadership turn over.