Building Trust Through Meaningful Community Engagement

Margaret Flinter, APRN, PhD, FAAN, FAANP, senior vice president and clinical director of the Moses Weitzman Health System and its Community Health Center, Inc., Nancy Oriol, MD, faculty associate dean for community engagement in medical education at Harvard Medical School, and Harvard Medical School students Tyler LeComer and William Zhuo-Ming Li, spoke about how mobile health clinics, like The Family Van, are addressing the challenge of providing high-quality, accessible health care while also fostering invaluable community engagement.

• Community Health and Patient-Centered Engagement: Mobile health clinics foster trust and deliver tailored care to diverse communities. They adapt to evolving needs and enhance health care accessibility.
• Personalized Care and Community Outreach: Personalized interactions are key in health care delivery. Understanding patients’ backgrounds, languages, and cultures is essential for effective outreach.
• Trust Building and Equitable Health Care: Mobile health clinics bridge gaps between communities and health care systems. Health care professionals must understand and honor community intricacies. Shared responsibility and partnership with community leaders are vital.
• Human-Centric Medicine and AI Integration: Human interaction is irreplaceable in medicine. AI tools must complement, not replace, human empathy and nuance. Continuous dialogue and active listening are essential. seizing opportune moments is crucial for community medical education.