ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the need for students preparing to teach as well as those in health care professions to become more aware of the health needs of poor communities, from the perspective of the poor themselves. It focuses on a critically oriented health education project, planned and conducted by students, and on a relationship developed with a patient at a Veterans Administration medical center. The false assumptions were found in many of the undergraduate education students who volunteered at the Project for Critical Literacy. Poor patients, oppressed to begin with, enter a health care environment that oppresses them further, and urge educators to help students become more aware of the situation of children and adults in poverty in a society in which health care is not a right. The language is one of domination and is largely unintelligible to anyone without special training in health care.
