Project Overview
This project is designed to bridge the gap in medical education by integrating the SNAP Challenge, an experiential learning exercise where participants live on the average Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) budget—about $4–5 per day—to understand the realities of food insecurity. Most medical students come from affluent backgrounds, limiting their first-hand experience with poverty. Traditional curricula rely on lectures, but experiential learning fosters deeper understanding and motivation for change. The Transformative Care Continuum (TCC) program at Ohio University’s Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine (OUHCOM) immerses first-year medical students in this structured experience, incorporating journaling, clinical case logs, and quality improvement initiatives to connect learning to real-world patient care. Unlike voluntary initiatives, this program embeds the challenge into training, enhancing empathy, clinical decision-making, and awareness of social determinants of health to better prepare future family medicine physicians.
Data and Data Collection Overview
This study collected data in August 2024 from forty medical students who had participated in the SNAP exercise as first-year students (between 2018 and 2023) through reflective journals, patient-centered observation forms, clinical case logs, and follow-up surveys to assess the impact of the SNAP Challenge on medical students' understanding of food insecurity. Students documented their daily experiences on a limited SNAP budget through reflective journals, capturing challenges and personal insights. Faculty assessed students’ ability to apply motivational interviewing and empathy using patient-centered observation forms during clinical encounters. Clinical case logs tracked students’ recognition of food insecurity in patient interactions and documentation in electronic health records. A long-term follow-up survey, conducted 9 months to 5 years post- participation, evaluated knowledge retention, continued engagement with food insecurity issues, and application of skills in clinical practice, with a 50% response rate (21/40). Results showed that students increased their awareness of food insecurity, improved patient screening, and initiated community-based interventions to address food insecurity in healthcare settings.
Shared Data Organization
The data file shared here contains the responses (including free-text entries) to the follow-up survey. The documentation files include the recruitment email, informed consent form and survey questionnaire used for the study, as well as this Data Narrative and an administrative README file. |
