Evaluating Student Knowledge Exchange through Immersive International Experiences - Side Event

The Enhancing Student Knowledge (ESKE) project funded by the UK’s Office for Students and Research England, looks to develop reciprocal knowledge exchange opportunities for students in the UK and Zambia. The project focusses students’ attention on the multi-dimensional food security challenges of both countries, particularly as they relate to long term health and nutritional outcomes of former refugees and their families in Zambia, and people without homes or sleeping rough in the UK. The project team have been developing an immersive five week learning opportunity across the two countries that will continue to be developed iteratively four times over 2 years with different sets of students in a range of different settings in London and in Mayukwayukwa, Western Province. The aim is to develop students into graduates who have an enhanced sense of their own potential as leaders of change, and of their interconnectedness to the global mission of mutual responsibility to an environmentally sustainable future. As well as new knowledge built on collectively executed activities and projects that take a systems approach to address the complex issues in hand, friendship and enhanced reciprocity between students in the global north and south are also anticipated outcomes.

The workshop at the 2021 PHAM shares the initial model developed to achieve these goals with the aim of inviting critique from conference participants and/or the sharing of others experience of fieldwork practice, in the spirit of creating a forum for mutually beneficial discussions and the sharing of best practice useful to the development of planetary health education in broadest terms. This is likely to be of interest to post graduate students, practitioners, educators, academics and others working in the context of practically addressing inequities through student focussed projects.

Elizabeth Sopdie, PhD, Administrative Director, Rural & Metropolitan Physician Associate Programs, University of Minnesota
Dominic Travis, DVM, MS, Associate Professor, Veterinary Population Medicine, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Minnesota
Shaun Kennedy, BS-Che; Director at the Food Systems Institute; Adjunct Associate Professor in Veterinary Population Medicine
Tiffany Wolf, DVM, Assistant Professor, Veterinary Population Medicine, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Minnesota
Barrett Colombo, MPP, Manager for Education and Policy, Institute on the Environment
Meg McEachran, Graduate Research Fellow, Minnesota Aquatic Invasive Species Research Center
Kaylee Errecaborde, Instructor, Department of Veterinary Population Medicine
Scott Spicer, MLIS, MA, Media Outreach Librarian, Libraries, University of Minnesota