Community Engagement

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    Communities' views, attitudes and recommendations on community-based education of undergraduate Health Sciences students in South Africa: A qualitative study
    (2013) Mabuza, Langalibalele; Diab, Paula; Reid, Stephen; Ntuli, Busisiwe; Flack, Penelope; Mpofu, Ratie; Daniels, Priscilla; Adonis, Tracy-Ann; Cakwe, Mandisa; Karuguti, Mugambi; Molefe, Ngkatiseng
    Background: Medical and Health Sciences students in South Africa undertake community-based education (CBE). Health professionals based at host sites are jointly responsible for training of these students in conjunction with university staff. This study explored the communities’ views, attitudes and recommendations regarding CBE undertaken by these students, in order to improve the quality of community support for these programmes. Method: A qualitative descriptive study was conducted at CBE placement sites of students from the Faculties of Health Sciences of the University of Limpopo (UL), University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) and University of the Western Cape (UWC) during 2010 and 2011. Focus group discussions were held with site facilitators, community leaders and patients, and interviews were audio recorded, transcribed and translated into English where necessary. Data were analysed using NVivo (version 9). Findings: CBE was seen to benefit communities, students and host institutions as there was perceived improvement of service delivery, better referral to hospitals and reduction of workloads on site staff. CBE was also seen as having potential for recruiting professionals who have better orientation to the area, and for motivating school pupils for a career in health sciences. Students acquired practical skills and gained confidence and experience. Challenges included poor communication between universities and host sites, burden of student teaching on site facilitators, cultural and religious sensitivity of students and language barriers. Conclusion: The study revealed that communities have an important role to play in the CBE of future health care professionals. CBE activities could be better organised and managed through formalised partnerships.
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    How social media can tell the world about university research
    (José Frantz, 2020) Makwela, Mologadi
    Research impact is primarily measured by publication in high-ranking journals, the majority of which are in English. This narrow measurement focusing on scientific journals, together with exclusionary language policies, impedes knowledge sharing and raises the question: Do the dominant scholarly communication systems serve the public good? As important as it is to publish in high-impact, peer-reviewed journals, impactful research should equally be measured by assessing the extent to which researchers connect with or share their knowledge with the public they serve. After all, through taxes, the public’s money contributes to funding research conducted at our universities. Therefore, researchers have a public duty to inform, share and foster better understanding of the challenges facing societies.
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    Learning to be a health activist
    (José Frantz, 2020) Casanueva, Ana
    In 2009, Professor Alan Christoffels from the South African National Bioinformatics Institute and Professor Trish Struthers from the School of Public Health decided to join forces on a multidisciplinary project aimed at developing an innovative health intervention for South African school learners from Grades 7 to 9. Funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) programme from the United States, a learning resource kit, titled “How to Be a Health Activist”, was developed with the aim of engaging and educating teenagers about tuberculosis within the context of HIV, as well as dealing with issues of self-esteem, poverty and helping them make informed decisions about their lives to help mitigate some of the health risks they face. This was, however, not just another learning resource for school learners.
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    Partnership for first-year students in innovative programme
    (José Frantz, 2020) Pather, Subethra
    Over the past few years, much emphasis at higher education institutions in South Africa has been placed on constructing higher education in a more collaborative manner. The #RhodesMustFall movement followed by #FeesMustFall protests in 2015-16 signalled that transformation at higher education institutions was moving at a very slow pace, and students’ voices and engagement were absent. The Fallist movement called for the opening up of the higher education space to involve a more inclusive society. This meant that it was time for universities to redefine the students’ relationship with the institution. The shift was from viewing our students as clients to viewing our students as partners in learning, teaching and student success. According to Paul Ramsden (2008), the success of higher education institutions is dependent on meticulous, deliberate and strategic participation of students in partnership with academics to improve teaching and learning and in this way also promote a sense of ownership.
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    Promoting excellence in teaching in health education through the development of partnerships
    (University of the Western Cape, 2007) Daniels, Priscilla; Adonis, Tracy-Ann
    INTRODUCTION: The Faculty of Community and Health Sciences (FCHS) reviewed its curricula for 1994, allowing the Primary Health Care (PHC) approach to be the foundation of teaching and learning in health. To institutionalize a PHC approach, the teaching methodology of service-learning which is premised on the development of partnerships, proved useful in realizing the faculty's goal. AIM: The aim of this study was to identify how to ensure that partnerships develop optimally and in a sustainable fashion to promote excellence and relevance in teaching and development of professional skills in FCHS. Methods: A qualitative study was employed using focus groups with the partners in 2 service-learning programmes in FCHS. RESULTS: Key findings included that capacity building programmes for all partners promotes good training and education in health sciences; partners' roles should be clarified and it's imperative that formalized partnership agreements exist to ensure collaboration and enhance teaching. CONCLUSION: Service-learning serves as an impetus to move higher education in the direction of multi-disciplinarity.
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    Scorecard can help monitor children’s psycho-social health and wellbeing
    (José Frantz, 2020) Casanueva, Ana
    Healthy early childhood development is fundamental to success and happiness, not only during childhood but throughout the course of a person’s life. This not only includes linguistic and cognitive development but also physical, social and emotional development. This development and the environment surrounding a child could either enhance or hinder optimal development of the individual. Schools are seen as an important environment for the promotion of education, but they could also be crucial for the promotion of health in children, as well as their families and community, through specific health-promotion programmes. The right programmes in a school setting could make a positive contribution to the overall health of the children and society.
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    Social support for digital inclusion of women in South African townships
    (Elsevier, 2022) Keating, Carlynn; Van Audenhove, Leo; Craffert, Leona
    Despite strong evidence of its critical role in facilitating digital inclusion, social support – the emotional, instrumental and informational aid received from support networks to assist an individual’s use of digital technologies – remains an unexplored area of research in low-resourced South African communities. By drawing on the ‘Typology of digital social support’ framework, this paper presents rich insights into the intricacies of the underlying motivations, behaviour and help-seeking processes in the digital engagement of women in South African townships. The findings show that the women had the strong social embeddedness necessary for digital support and relied on a range of nuanced and cross-cutting support-seeking strategies, including formal and particularly informal support channels and, to a lesser extent, self-learning. This qualitative phenomenological study relies on in-depth individual interviews with a small sample of women in three South African townships. In revealing potential disparities between social support in developed and developing regions, the study affirms the need to prioritise further South African research and the development of theoretical frameworks grounded in local realities.
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    What social innovation and development can do for a university
    (José Frantz, 2020) Pather, Subethra
    Invention and innovation are two different concepts. In thecase of an invention, an investment of resources financial or otherwise is made, with the outcome being new knowledge. Innovation, on the other hand, is the outcome of utilising the new knowledge that is the outcome of the invention process to address a market or societal need and thereby results in value creation, which may be monetary or other. As articulated in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Report 2010, “Innovation is about creating value from knowledge ... Knowledge is the key input to innovation.”