Fauziah Rabbani, Yousuf Memon, Agha Xaher Gul, Nousheen Pradhan, Fahmida Khowaja, Peter Robert Hatcher.
Model of a successful community campus partnership: urban health program of Aga Khan University, Karachi.
Pak J Public Health Jan ;2(1):71-3.

Partnerships between communities and higher educational institutions as a strategy for social change is gaining considerable momentum. The Urban Health Program (UHP) of Community Health Sciences Department, Aga Khan University (AKU) Karachi was initiated in 1985 as a community campus partnership model to develop primary health care (PHC) prototypes. The UHP has tested integrated models of health and development in 17 different urban squatter settlements of Karachi overtime and has evolved through various phases. The authors map UHP based on four standard stages of community development to reflect UHP\'s community-campus engagement. In the first stage of interaction there is stepwise fruitful dialogue between campus and communities; leading onto motivational phase as the trust builds up. In the third stage of mobilization the community comes forward to address its issues and finally in the self-reliance stage the community becomes progressively capable to sustain the momentum of activities. UHP has passed through all of these stages and based on its civic engagement activities has received the international Mac Jannet award from the Taillores Network. The success of this community-campus partnership model can be determined by the presence of UHP operations over decades in responsive communities, diversity of academic health professionals trained over a period of time, more than 100 peer reviewed research publications, easy accessibility of women and children to the UHP for health care, the presence of several social development projects, active community campus partnership in all stages of community development and successful disengagement of UHP from various communities overtime.

PakMediNet -Pakistan's largest Database of Pakistani Medical Journals - http://www.pakmedinet.com