Social Justice Movements to Health Policy: Lessons from a Pilot Cross-Course Collaborative Project

During the spring 2024 semester, we redesigned our courses to pilot a cross-course group project involving a social sciences course (SSC) titled, “Social Justice Movements in the U.S.”, an elective primarily for first and second year students, and a health sciences course (HSC) titled, “Capstone,” a program requirement for fourth year students. This project tasked cross-course groups to collaborate with each other to conduct research on a social justice movement and to develop community-based policies to address the lasting concern, all while being mindful of the social determinants of health, structural racism, and overall inequities. In this article, we will share our approach to this project and lessons learned. 

Approach and Timeline

During the summer 2023 semester, we identified through lines in our own scholarly interests. After a  handful of meetings, we identified a great opportunity to pursue a SoTL project in our classes that tasks students with using specific skills, taking ownership of their content, learning and growing together, and most of all seeing how an event in the past can influence community health in the future.  

From there, we brought on an undergraduate research assistant and began planning. During the fall 2023 semester, we held bi-weekly planning sessions. During this time, we agreed on three core goals for the project: (1) to extend students’ learning about the histories of social action movements from historical movements to the development of policy solutions; (2) to facilitate students’ group work skills, both within and across courses; and (3) to promote mentoring within the cross-course group through a “near-peer” model. 

We then built the infrastructure for the project through a detailed “Project Guide”. This guide contained the background and rationale for the collaboration; a graphic showing the week-by-week tasks and responsibilities; and an overview of each individual task, including course ownership and how groups will share their work. We also planned for three face-to-face collaborative sessions outside of class time (one of which was cancelled due to weather). Throughout the project, we intentionally planned to use a role-play paradigm; groups acted as clients and consultants through the production of requisite information, from identifying an issue to presentation of a policy proposal and negotiation of the policy’s potential efficacy. 

The topics our classes worked on included the Women’s Health Movement of the 1970s, environmental crises such as water pollution in Michigan, urban growth and injustice experienced in Boston’s Chinatown, and the Civil Rights Movement’s health activism. SSC students selected the topic, formed groups, conducted research to identify sub-topics, and submitted a detailed report to HSC on their findings. HSC clarified their questions with SSC then conducted a literature and policy review; developed two policy briefs at any level (local, state, federal); and presented them to their SSC partners who chose the brief that best addressed the social justice movement and their studies of social sciences. HSC also planned for logistical matters needed to enact the policy and reviewed and provided feedback to SSC’s project components. The last face-to-face collaborative session was designed to share policy proposals, answer thought provoking and logistic-related questions, and ultimately vote for the most impactful policy. 

Lessons Learned

After surveying our classes and debriefing with each other, we concluded the pilot collaboration a success. We heard students report satisfaction in expanding their course scope to explore how events in the past impact health-related decisions in the future. The following became apparent to us:

Research assistant: We are grateful to have an RA to not only hear from the student perspective on project logistics and to help us develop IRB materials, but so they can act as a liaison and mediator between course groups. The RA was compensated through federal work-study funding. 

Students crave face-to-face meetings with their cross-course colleagues: This one surprised us, as we imagined students were more comfortable collaborating asynchronously. We both heard our students report the importance of in-person meetings and those opportunities to develop relationships and rapport, address miscommunications, and to keep both course groups engaged even if the current ownership of the task is the other course. We will also be rescheduling our courses to meet at the same time for ease of scheduling check-ins and project pass-offs.  

Course redevelopment and prioritizing content: While the HSC course was newly redeveloped with this collaboration in mind, we learned that the SSC content should shift in the future. The updated syllabus will front-load teaching and learning about the social justice movements that may be selected for the collaboration. This is the most significant challenge for the SSC course because it necessitates strategic delivery of content; students need to understand how social movements evolve in general to have theoretical and logistical context to inform their understanding of the movements they will examine. The SSC syllabus will be re-conceptualized to accommodate the valuable collaborative project learning experience. We are also planning to ask a Librarian to visit the class to demonstrate research strategies for social science topics. 

Define and provide examples of mentorship: At the end of the semester during a debrief, HSC students voiced that they did not feel like they were part of a near-peer mentorship. In preparation for next year, we will list concrete steps and scenarios where HSC can serve in a near-peer mentorship role to SSC. We also hope the additional face-to-face meetings, shared social sciences research training, and ability for us to visit the other class briefly to answer questions will further develop collaborative skills.

Communication: We required all cross-course groups to develop a Team Charter of agreed upon cross-course group policies and procedures for optimal group cohesion, and to maintain a Microsoft Teams page with both instructors included. Our role in the Team was to answer questions, clarify information, and share details about the social justice movement or policy development. We learned that students enjoyed the opportunity to get in touch with us asynchronously; however, students wanted agency over their preferred communication method. Next time, we’ll continue to use the Team Charter and we’ll build in the agency for students to choose intra-team communication but will still require Teams for cross-course communication purposes.

Individual course grading and expectations: We both independently integrated the project into our courses as we saw fit. However, we both heard our students report that they felt the collaboration was uneven due to differences in the overall component of final grade and assessment requirements. To that end, we will ensure uniformity in the weighting and expectations next time. 

Developing this project required a ton of planning and intention, patience and engagement, creative flexibility, and much grace. Our efforts were totally worth it as our students strengthened highly marketable skills and learned together and from each other. Selfishly, we had a lot of fun, too. 

Kristen Petersen, PhD, is an associate professor of history and social sciences. Anthony Lacina, DHSc, is an assistant professor of health sciences and program director for undergraduate and doctoral health sciences. Lisa Sciarrillo is an undergraduate health sciences student, all at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in Boston, MA.