he Ibarapa Programme was founded on February 9, 1963, as the Ibarapa Project, a collaborative and cooperative health development project of the University of Ibadan, the Western Nigeria Government, and the Ibarapa community. The Rockefeller Foundation provided generous seed funding for the project, while the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and the London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene provided technical support to medical staff. The three specific objectives of the project as restated in the 25th anniversary book [1] were as follows:

To teach medical students and doctors, through practical work, the principles and practices of community medicine
To study the problems of health care delivery in the Ibarapa Community and to develop the health services of the district into a model of what an integrated local health service should be, in collaboration with the Government of Western Nigeria and in a manner that can be applied to other districts in Nigeria and other developing countries
To carry out research into various aspects of health and disease in the community and thus to build up a body of knowledge on the various factors which are involved in health promotion and disease prevention
The Ibarapa Project evolved into the Ibarapa Programme and has remained an interdisciplinary training program in community health, development, and empowerment. The Ibarapa Programme has hosted several postings of resident doctors (at registrar and senior registrar levels), 217 community health postings of medical students (since 1963); six postings of dental students (from 2007); several 3-month internships for master's and diploma students from the African Regional Health Education Centre at the Department of Health Promotion and Education; over 21annual postings of community health officers in training at the University College Hospital (UCH); and many other postings of students from the UCH Schools of Nursing, Midwifery, and Perioperative Nursing, the Oyo State School of Midwifery, and the community health extension workers of the Oyo State School of Hygiene, Eleyele. In addition, elective students from the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Britain, Finland, and other parts of the world come regularly to Ibarapa for experiences in community medicine and tropical medicine.