Our results suggest that the CES education-support program has several important strengths and insights.
Pasantes reported that their medical knowledge, and clinical and leadership skills all improved during the CES education-support program.
The results of this study show that the CES education-support program is a transformative experience for participants.
This paper describes the components, evaluation, and insights of the first 2 years of the CES education-support program.
The data reflect completed pre-, mid-, and post-intervention questionnaires for six pasantes, representing the first two classes of pasantes to complete the CES education-support program.
Table 2 shows highlights of what pasantes felt were the best and worst aspects of both the overall pasantía and the CES education-support program.
Ultimately, if we are to engage in true health systems strengthening, we will need to develop a strategy to fully transition the CES education-support program to the public sector (22).
CES staff evaluates the CES education-support program on both an informal continuous basis and also at designated formal intervals at the end of each pasante cycle (every 6 months in January and July).
Asked to identify the worst aspects of the CES education-support program, pasantes criticized: the seminar's classes being too long and dense, the curriculum being poorly defined, the teaching approach being too informal, too many different instructors teaching the courses, too much focus on quality improvement, and limited distribution of written resources.
The six pasantes who completed the study ranged in age from 22 to 26 years, included three men and three women, had all completed required coursework at an accredited medical school in Mexico making them eligible to complete their social service requirement, and all had completed the pasantía as part of the CES education-support program in Chiapas.
Before 1500 ce, education throughout the region consisted chiefly of the transmission of cultural values through family and community living, supplemented by some formal teaching of each locality's dominant religion animism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, or Islam.
