The best in art and life comes from a center – something urgent and powerful, an idea or emotion that insists on its being. From that insistence, a shape emerges and creates its structure out of passion.”
- Essayist Roger Rosenblatt
Our educational program provides a student-centered learning opportunity with particular emphasis on helping patients, advocates, and future providers learn to work in real collaboration. We teach professional, graduate, and returning adult students from a diversity of disciplines the art and science of patient advocacy and truly patient-centered care.
Learning to attend to patients’ voices and to accord primacy to their experiences are central themes in our curriculum. Our learner-centered teaching mirrors the role advocates play in the lives of patients: just as good advocacy activates patients to engage in their own care, so too good teaching fosters self-directed, highly engaged learning that seamlessly integrates content knowledge with experiential elements.
Student Advocates
We aspire less to tell you about patient advocacy and more to help you discover for yourselves what this rich, growing field holds for you. We commit to creating the type of learning environment – safe, open, caring, respectful, and robust – that nurtures lifelong learning and the relationships formed in the process.
Throughout our program we explore the many facets of advocacy; traversing topics that range from the implications of an insurance-based health care delivery system to the importance of engaging patients in their own care, as well as broader health care reform. Learners experience several crosscutting themes in our curriculum: empathy, empowerment, patient centered problem-solving, deep listening and system change. We believe these are the touchstones of patient advocacy and their significance is woven throughout our program.
Innovative Online Education
Learning online at the Center is an interactive, multimedia learning experience. You will engage in a wide array of activities like watching videos, listening to podcasts, exploring readings, working with peers on collaborative documents, discussing cases and activities on forums, reflecting on assignments, and exploring resources on and offline.
Not only do our students come to us from a variety of disciplines, but they also enjoy a diverse and interdisciplinary faculty who are seasoned advocates, as well as passionate teachers.
Our students experience personalized learning that is tailored to fit their unique interests and goals. Our interdisciplinary faculty and advisors provide frequent individualized and written feedback.
Social learning is central to our online educational model. Our courses are infused with cooperative peer activities and collaboration that foster a unique online community of learners. These learning spaces invite participation through team-based tasks, group problem-solving, and learning by creating.
You may join us online, but that doesn’t mean you need to be a computer scientist to be successful in our courses. We’ve worked hard to create a warm and inviting space where technology facilitates rather than interferes with your learning. Whether you’re an apprehensive beginner or an experienced techie, we think you’ll find our online learning environment intuitive, welcoming and easy to use.
Everything we do is based on current and emerging patient advocacy research, as well as our real world experiences as patient advocates and educators. Students learn by working directly with clients under the guidance of interdisciplinary faculty in our advanced courses. We teach what we’ve learned from helping thousands of patients and families navigate the health care system.
