Service-based Learning

Students at the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio have many opportunities to be involved in volunteer activities that give them hands-on experience in applying medical skills. A major new effort of the Center is to support student volunteer activities in San Antonio and on the border, and to create life-changing opportunities for students to work abroad in resource-poor areas and to reflect on that experience.

Many students long to work in volunteer healthcare situations early in their medical school experience rather than waiting until clinical years, and the Center supports their efforts. It encourages the UTHSCSA student volunteer initiative, Frontera de Salud, in the colonias of Corpus Christi and Laredo, where residents live at or below the poverty line and are medically underserved.

Current grants support work in the colonias, as well as student-run, faculty-supervised clinics in San Antonio's Alpha Home and at San Antonio Metropolitan Ministries. These clinics provide basic but much-needed health care services to people who struggle to survive.

A complementary program of international electives is sending a growing number of fourth-year students abroad each year to work in a resource-poor medical environment. In 2007, 20 students will visit South India for a month to work with local doctors and nurses at the CMC Hospital in Vellore.