Developing Community-engaged Interprofessional Education in the Philippines

This chapter is about a change process and the leadership required, recognizing that once change occurs nothing can be the same again. Collaborative practice in healthcare has been shown to contribute to better health outcomes in many parts of the world (WHO, 2010). Interprofessional education (IPE) that produces collaborative-practice-ready professionals has thus been practiced in many health professions’ educational institutions worldwide for decades (Oandasan & Reeves, 2005; WHO, 2010). In the Philippines, however, IPE is a new practice and no health professional educational institution in the country has thus far reported experiences in IPE. Though one or two health professional service organizations claim to practice interprofessional collaborative patient care, no accounts of these experiences have been published. Likewise, community engagement is a practice not widely utilized by health professional educational institutions in the country. In some parts of the world, particularly the United States, national organizations and state health departments have been recommending the community engagement of health professional schools (Commission on Community-engaged Scholarship in the Health Professions, 2005; Coffman & Henderson, 2001) as an essential strategy for improving health professional education to achieve ‘a diverse health workforce, increase access to health care, and eliminate health disparities’ (CCE, 2005, p. 5).