DPH 801 Module 8 Practical Immersion Reflection Example

Learning Beside the Community: A Reflection on 50 Hours of Practical Immersion

Student Name

Doctor of Public Health Program, Aspen University

DPH 801: Health Determinants, Disparities, Behavior and Promotion

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Learning Beside the Community: A Reflection on 50 Hours of Practical Immersion

DPH 801 includes 50 hours of practical immersion, time spent applying course concepts in real public health settings. This reflection describes an immersion split between a county health department's chronic disease program and a network of church health ministries, and considers what the experience taught about determinants, theory in practice, partnership and the author's development as a doctoral practitioner.

The Settings and Activities

About 30 hours were spent with the health department's chronic disease program: attending planning meetings, reviewing hypertension surveillance data, observing a pharmacist-led clinic and helping draft a grant section. About 20 hours were spent with church health ministries: assisting at blood pressure screenings, attending a ministry leaders' meeting and listening to members describe their experiences with care.

Seeing Determinants Up Close

Surveillance maps showed uncontrolled hypertension clustered in the same neighborhoods identified in the first module. At church screenings, members described skipping medication when money was short and missing appointments because of work schedules. These conversations made concrete what the literature describes as the causes of the causes (Braveman & Gottlieb, 2014).

Theory in Practice

Practitioners rarely named theories, yet their work reflected them. The pharmacist clinic built confidence by teaching patients to read their own monitors, a mastery approach. Church leaders relied on members who had succeeded to encourage others, an example of observational learning. Recognizing theory in everyday practice helped the author see how constructs such as self-efficacy translate into actions (Bandura, 2004). Seeing these patterns made the theories feel less abstract and more like descriptions of what good practitioners already do.

Linking Experience to Concepts

The table links immersion experiences to course concepts.

Partnership and Trust

Ministry leaders were initially cautious, recalling past projects that collected data and left. Trust grew when the author helped with logistics, listened more than spoke and promised to share what was learned. This experience echoed principles of community-based participatory work, which stress equitable partnership and returning results to communities (Israel et al., 1998).

Tensions Between Evidence and Priorities

The health department favored an evidence-based pharmacist model; ministry leaders prioritized nutrition classes their members requested. Rather than choosing one, planners discussed pairing them. The tension showed that evidence must be balanced with community priorities to gain participation. The resulting plan combined both, with nutrition classes as an entry point to screening.

Cultural Humility

The immersion underlined why cultural humility matters: admitting what one's own vantage point misses, learning from community members and addressing power differences. The author noticed moments of speaking too quickly or assuming shared understanding and adjusted by asking more questions.

Ethical Reflections

Ethical questions arose about privacy at public screenings, about raising expectations for programs that might not be funded and about who benefits from data collected in communities. Discussing these openly with supervisors and ministry leaders helped identify safeguards, such as private screening areas and clear explanations of how data would be used.

Growth in Doctoral Competencies

The immersion strengthened competencies in analyzing determinants, applying theory, communicating with diverse audiences and building partnerships. It also revealed areas for growth, including policy advocacy and budgeting, which the author plans to develop in later courses. Writing a grant section under a deadline was a practical lesson in translating evidence into fundable objectives.

Applying the Learning

The author will carry lessons into later coursework and practice: begin with listening sessions, look for theory in existing practice, pair evidence-based models with community-requested components, return results to partners and advocate for structural changes alongside programs.

Surprises

Several things surprised the author: how much time staff spent on grant reporting rather than program work, how strongly church members valued being asked their opinions and how often clinical staff and community leaders held different views of the same problem. These surprises challenged assumptions from coursework.

Relationships Built

The immersion produced relationships that may support future work, including a ministry leader who invited the author to help plan a health fair and a department epidemiologist willing to share data for a later course project. Such relationships are part of doctoral practice.

Connecting to the Course Project

Experiences during the immersion shaped the intervention design in Module 6. The advisory group's suggestion of workplace outreach, the pharmacist clinic's approach to home monitoring and ministry leaders' emphasis on family all appear in the design.

Personal Reflection

The author came to see disparities not as statistics but as the accumulated result of decisions about neighborhoods, jobs and care, felt in the daily lives of people met during the immersion. That perspective will guide future work.

Feedback From Supervisors

The health department preceptor noted the author's growing comfort with surveillance data and encouraged more practice in presenting findings to non-technical audiences. The ministry coordinator praised the author's listening and suggested learning more about church governance. Both pieces of feedback shaped the development plan.

Development Plan

Over the next year, the author plans to take on a policy advocacy project, strengthen budgeting skills through the program's finance course and continue volunteering with the ministry network to maintain the relationship built during the immersion.

What the Author Would Do Differently

Looking back, the author would have met ministry leaders earlier, before planning activities, and would have kept a more detailed daily log to support reflection. Arriving with questions rather than plans would have built trust faster.

Reciprocity

Immersion should benefit the community as well as the student. The author returned a short summary of screening results to each church, helped prepare a funding application for the ministry network and shared resources on local medication assistance programs.

Conclusion

Fifty hours of immersion connected course concepts to real people and places. Determinants became visible in neighborhood maps and personal stories, theory appeared in everyday practice and partnership required trust earned through listening and service. The experience deepened the author's commitment to multilevel, community-grounded approaches to reducing disparities.

References

Bandura, A. (2004). Health promotion by social cognitive means. Health Education & Behavior, 31(2), 143-164. https://doi.org/10.1177/1090198104263660

Braveman, P., & Gottlieb, L. (2014). The social determinants of health: It's time to consider the causes of the causes. Public Health Reports, 129(Suppl. 2), 19-31. https://doi.org/10.1177/00333549141291S206

Israel, B. A., Schulz, A. J., Parker, E. A., & Becker, A. B. (1998). Review of community-based research: Assessing partnership approaches to improve public health. Annual Review of Public Health, 19, 173-202. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.publhealth.19.1.173