Improving medical education through the paradigm of social accountability

The World Health Organization (WHO) defined medical schools social accountability as: ‘‘the obligation to direct their education, research, and service activities toward addressing the priority health concerns of the community, the region, or nation they have a mandate to serve. The priority health concerns are to be identified jointly by governments, health care organizations, health professionals and the public’’1. More recently the Global Consensus for Social Accountability of Medical Schools (GCSA) defines a socially accountable medical school as one that: ‘‘responds to current and future health needs and challenges in society, reorientates its education, research and service priorities accordingly, strengthens governance and partnerships with other stakeholders and uses evaluation and accreditation to assess their performance and impact’’2. These definitions are very important to foster a broader discussion on social accountability and health education for the future we want our students and next generations to have.