Chapter 8. Cooperative Education
IOH Toolkit
Chapter 8. Cooperative Education
Cooperative education (Co-op) is a powerful vehicle for helping students develop the set of oral health competencies needed for integrated primary care delivery. This curricular innovation provides students with meaningful, semester-long immersion experiences in real-world employment settings, an arrangement that differs from service-learning in both depth and breadth. During a Co-op semester, students are paid for their labor and receive academic credit. They do not take courses or pay tuition.
Creating a Co-op to equip students with the skills to integrate oral health competencies into primary care practice requires partnering with a primary care provider that is already committed to oral health integration. Students from the health sciences who participate in the Co-op will have an opportunity to develop core oral health competencies while gaining experience in integrated primary care delivery.
Critical elements of a successful Co-op program include:
Note: If you do not have the infrastructure to support a cooperative education initiative at your institution, the information in this unit can be applied in any clinical practice setting wanting to integrate oral health with primary care.
IOH at Northeastern University (NEU)
The IOH Oral Health and Primary Care Co-op provides students with a 6-month immersion experience at a federally qualified health center (FQHC) with a Patient-Centered Medical Home (a primary care practice that has adopted a set of processes aimed at coordinating and improving the delivery of patient care). The selected FQHC provides primary care integrated with behavioral and oral health services. Student learning outcomes for the program were adapted from the Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice and the Interprofessional Oral Health Core Clinical Domains and Competencies. In the Co-op, students deliver patient-centered, integrated, team-based care to vulnerable and underserved populations. This hands-on experience offers multiple learning and growth opportunities. Among them, students are able to cultivate collaborative skills in an interprofessional setting, contribute to the FQHC’s goals in a meaningful way, and witness some of the challenges involved in addressing health disparities.
For more information about Northeastern University’s cooperative education program visit: http://www.northeastern.edu/coop/.
First Published: 11/2015
Last updated: 03/2016