Students on campus can now help local organizations for credit to apply global health locally.

For almost the entire semester, students are assigned to work in a local service agency to understand the health implications of selected social situations. Practicing Global Health Locally: Practicing the Social Determinants of Health, a service-learning class, requires students to work nine hours a week in agencies.

The class will address several different sources of distress to health, which may include food, sovereignty, security, immigration, housing, disability, employment, and other social determinants of health.

Maureen McCue, an adjunct assistant professor in International Programs and an adjunct clinical professor of public health, teaches the class.

“They are working with hidden or overlooked communities in the Iowa City area,” she said. “Because people are suffering all over the world from the same sources, this class teaches students how to tackle these sources so they can take them to a bigger scale later in life.”

Local Foods Connection, Iowa City Free Medical Clinic, Center for Worker Justice, Shelter House, and the Mayor’s Youth Empowerment Program are among some of the agencies students can choose to work at.

The class is four credit hours, which includes meeting each week for one hour and then nine hours working at the agencies. This semester, the inaugural semester for the class, 11 students took part.

UI junior Ethel Recinos works at Local Foods Connection in Iowa City, which donates fresh produce to low-income families.

“I really like it,” she said. “It gets people out of Iowa City. When most students think of Iowa City, they mostly think of the bars and the campus, but it turns out there is a lot more to it than that.”

Recinos noted the practical applications of the class.

“The class addresses health care in a unique way,” she said. “Not only what people do when they get sick, like go to Student Health, but also why people get sick in the first place.”

UI senior Ioana Manahilova, who volunteers at two agencies, Backyard Abundance and Shelter House, also likes the course.

“Out of all the college classes I’ve taken, this is by far the most impactful,” she said. “The class allows students to not only participate with groups on campus and improve campus life but also allows them to get involved in the Iowa City community and improve the community’s life.”

Chris Squier, the director of the Global Health Studies Program, said students would benefit if they took the class.