Transforming Education: Five-Year Evolution of a Justice Health Curriculum for Pre-Health Students

Proposal: Problem: In 2021, 6.9 million people were admitted to local U.S. jails, and at year-end, over 1.2 million people were incarcerated in U.S. prisons (Zeng, 2022). Given that over 95% of the prison population will re-enter the community, health professionals must be responsive to this population’s unique needs (BJS, 2015). Although there is a nationwide push to introduce graduate students to these needs, we propose that the undergraduate level is an opportunity for an even earlier intervention. To this end, we developed the Justice Health Summer Program for undergraduate students at Rutgers University in 2019 through a partnership with Rutgers University Correctional Health Care.

Intervention: The initial program structure included rotational shadowing of healthcare professionals at a NJ correctional facility for eight weeks during the summer in addition to didactics in social justice and common clinical topics. Students also developed an intervention to address an unmet healthcare need in their respective placement site. One example is a nutritional breakdown of items on a prison commissary list. The program has evolved since the pandemic in favor of increased opportunities for remote collaboration, but continues to encourage participation from a range of pre-health students, including students with interests in nursing, dentistry, medicine, and social work. The program also aims to center the voices of individuals with lived experiences. With a goal of centering the voices of individuals with lived experience of carceral involvement, students worked closely with peer specialists to inform their summative health education projects. Recent program participants will be in attendance to share program impact on their understanding of health equity and future career aspirations.

Relevance to social mission: Participants will recognize key components of an effective carceral health curriculum with potential to bring this model to their respective institutions. Hearing directly from trainees at various stages in health professions education will highlight the ways that this transformative service learning program facilitates insight into caring for marginalized populations.

Expertise of presenters: Mansi Shah is a former Board Member of the Academic Consortium on Criminal Justice Health, founder of the Rutgers Justice Health summer program, and current medical student at Columbia. Brianna Titus, Younseo Tiffany Yun, Mariam Ghanem, and Nishk Sutaria are pre-health undergraduate students at Rutgers University who were selected to participate in the 2023 Justice Health Summer Program. Dr. Arthur Brewer is the faculty advisor and statewide medical director of correctional health services in prisons across New Jersey.