We are delighted to announce that Ms Monique Purcell and the Faculty of Pharmacy team, Lynda Bryant, Lynette van Dyk and Emily Repinz are the winners of the 2025 Vice-Chancellor’s Distinguished Community Engagement Award.

The Vice-Chancellor’s Distinguished Community Engagement Award is a prestigious annual award that recognises academics who have established meaningful and sustainable partnerships between the University and community partners in the areas of teaching, learning, and research, in ways that contribute to sustainable human and community development.

This award recognises the outstanding work of the Sakh’impilo Community Engagement Learning Initiative, a remarkable example of curriculum-embedded community engagement that is making a tangible difference to the lives of vulnerable communities across the Eastern Cape. In partnership with the Eastern Cape Department of Health, the initiative provides vital primary healthcare services to communities facing significant barriers to access.

Coordinated by Ms Monique Purcell, Sakh’impilo brings together Faculty of Pharmacy staff, third- and fourth-year pharmacy students, Department of Health professionals, and community members in a collaborative model that advances both public health and student learning.

 

Emerging from the Faculty’s earlier Community Engagement Programme, Sakh’impilo was established as a structured platform for meaningful engagement, experiential learning, and preventative healthcare. As a service-learning programme, it creates mutual benefit for all partners.

In 2025 alone, the fourth-year cohort provided care to 280 patients, with 111 patients referred for further diagnosis and treatment evidence of both the initiative’s reach and its clinical significance. This is a project that does not simply change lives; it helps to save them.

The programme operates in areas where healthcare is often difficult to access, including Vukani, Nkanini, Ethembeni, Khayalitsha informal settlement, Extension 9, St Mary’s DCC, Scotchfarm, Sun City, Settlers Day Hospital, Raglan Road Clinic, the Seven Fountains area, Amakhala in Sidbury, Salem, Farmerfield, Broughton Farm, Bathurst Community Hall, and the Kariega Conservation Centre. Through this consistent and carefully coordinated model, the initiative supports early detection, timely referral, improved adherence, and reduced financial and transport burdens for patients and families.

At the heart of the initiative is a purpose-built mobile healthcare trailer named Sakh’impilo, meaning building healthier communities. The name captures the project’s commitment to sustainable, preventative healthcare through education, screening, and relationship-centred engagement. Operating on a four-week cycle, the mobile unit serves both urban and remote communities and offers a comprehensive package of services, including pharmaceutical care, health screening, health promotion, nutritional support, maternal and child health services, women’s health, and care relating to non-communicable diseases, communicable diseases, and minor ailments.

 

 

In 2025, the initiative reached a major milestone through the introduction of a Primary Care Drug Therapy (PCDT) component, enabled by a locum licence. This allows the team to prescribe and dispense medicines up to Schedule 4 on site, significantly strengthening continuity of care by making immediate treatment possible where appropriate, while maintaining sound clinical governance and alignment with public-sector protocols. Referrals arising from site visits include hypertension, diabetes, respiratory and cardiovascular conditions, TB- and HIV-related concerns, and mental health needs — demonstrating the programme’s real diagnostic and public health value.

At the same time, Sakh’impilo offers pharmacy students a rich and rigorous learning experience.

Students engage directly with the lived realities of patients and communities, learn beyond the dispensary model, work alongside interprofessional teams, and develop practical, ethical, and socially responsive forms of professional competence. These experiences are intentionally embedded in the BPharm curriculum and are supported through structured assessment, patient care analyses, care plans, and reflective group discussions following each engagement.

All activities within the Sakh’impilo Community Engagement Learning Initiative are aligned with national health priorities through the Department of Health’s Standard Treatment Guidelines, Essential Medicines List, and the Health for All framework. In this way, the project extends Rhodes University’s contribution far beyond the boundaries of campus, while strengthening the preparation of graduates who are responsive to the needs of society.

Strategically designed, thoughtfully implemented, and ably coordinated, Sakh’impilo is a resounding success. It stands as a powerful example of how universities and government departments can build accountable, generative partnerships that strengthen primary healthcare while educating socially responsive graduates. It is a beacon of hope in our context and a credible model for wider replication,  showing how curriculum-embedded community engagement can contribute to more just, preventative, and reparative health outcomes.

Sakh’impilo is a powerful example of what becomes possible when universities commit to sustained, collaborative, and purposeful engagement. It embodies excellence in teaching and learning, strengthens research, reinforces public health systems, and contributes meaningfully to more just and responsive forms of care.

It is, quite simply, work that changes — and saves — lives.

In many ways, this initiative gives expression to the vision of Rhodes University itself — a university that is deeply anchored in its place, committed to the public good, and dedicated to cultivating graduates who are not only knowledgeable, but socially conscious and ethically grounded. It reflects an institution that understands its role not as separate from society, but as inextricably connected to it — working in partnership to address inequality, advance human dignity, and contribute to a more just and caring world. Through programmes such as Sakh’impilo, Rhodes University affirms its commitment to engaged scholarship, to relational ways of working, and to the co-creation of knowledge and solutions that matter.