Medical students to lead the way on GP community engagement
27th February 2024
As part of Imperial College London’s’ GP training programme, Listen to Act held a workshop with 250 medical students to support live community engagement work during their GP placements.
“Listen to Act’s talk really helped bring to life to medical students how community organisations can support health and wellbeing.”
“A huge thank you to Alex for providing a brilliant talk for second- year medical students highlighting Listen to Act’s approach and insights from their work. Hearing insights from community organisations is really valuable to shape students’ approaches to community engagement and understanding of the impact that community collaborations can have.”
What did we do?
We ran a workshop in January 2024 for over 250 students as part of a ‘morning for students’ to develop their projects and gain insight from community organisations.
Students were tasked with exploring the health and wellbeing experiences of a specific groups, including refugees, neurodiverse individuals, and those experiencing social isolation. This was achieved through research and speaking to community organisations.
After completing their community engagement work as part of their GP placements, students were expected to present their findings back to GP practice staff to help them to better understand and engage with local communities around their health and wellbeing.
To assist the students, half of whom have already reached out to their target groups, Listen to Act presented our core principles when it comes to engaging with communities. This included sharing the importance of building trust and mutually agreed outcomes, having an awareness of the intricacies of a live community engagement project, and to provide more applied advice and guidance throughout the engagement process.
Our aim was to demonstrate that the right approach can lead to varied and rich insights that can be captured through a sustainable model of inclusive youth participation. We also provided a steer on how findings can be shared, interpreted, and acted on.
At the end of the presentation, the students were asked to reflect on what they had learned and they told us that listening is key to considering individuals who aren’t actively engaging and how to support them, to remain transparent and flexible, and not to assume anything when engaging with communities.
Get in touch
If you‘d like to invite us to talk to a group you work with about how to carry out effective community engagement, please contact us on hello@listentoact.org