Community-University Partnerships for Mutual Learning

This article discusses what has been learned about building community partnerships through the Health Professions Schools in Service to the Nation Program (HPSISN), a national demonstration program of service-learning in health professions educational programs. The findings are discussed in the context of: the challenge of distinguishing service-learning from community-based clinical training experiences, community perspectives of the university and partnerships, reciprocity and mutuality in community-university relationships, social and economic benefits arising from the community-university partnership, benefits for community organizations of participation in university partnerships, and motivation for universities to respond to the community perspective. The systematic approach to data collection and analysis from the community perspective suggests that the findings are generalizable to other professions and to general education. [author]