Teaching health educators to work effectively with communities is a critical task today. This article will describe how a community diagnosis course, an intensive field experience through which graduate students in health behavior and health education conduct a community assessment, helps students in their development as community health educators. Existing literature on the professional preparation of health educators and the writings of students who have completed the course demonstrate the professional skills that students gain through the experience. Students develop cultural competence, come to a more sophisticated understanding of their relationship to communities and their professional role as health educators, gain experience working effectively as part of a team, and learn specific skills in conducting needs assessments, gathering and analyzing qualitative and quantitative data, and building collaborative efforts.
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