The Detroit Chapter of the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship at Authority Health has announced its 2020-21 Fellows:

Jeneen Ali, Wayne State University: Ms. Ali's project will focus on connections to interactive, effective nutrition education in the Centering Pregnancy pre-natal program to meet the goals of reducing food insecurity and improve birth and maternal outcomes. Virtual nutrition education sessions will be made available to program participants. The intended result is decreasing instances of food insecurity, knowledge of nutrition, healthy eating during and after pregnancy, and improved maternal and birth outcomes.

Ashleigh Peoples, Wayne State University School of Medicine: Ms. People's project targets identify and remediating features of the home environment that can cause or contribute to falls and injury and to promote safe, independent living among aging adults. This project will improve home hazard assessment scores, reduce falls, and improve functional outcomes through reduced expenditures for institutional care and case manager visits.

Sean Jones, Wayne University School of Medicine/ Mike Ilitch School of Business: Mr. Jones's project will address the specific health needs of individuals with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities. This project involves the creation of a student-run clinic that promotes the overall quality of life of individuals with disabilities and their families. Follow-up consultations will be initiated to ensure the individual has assistance navigating the healthcare system.

Nona Bhatia, Wayne State University School of Medicine: Ms. Bhatia's project will develop a conflict resolution/violence prevention program for young people in the Nardin Park area of Detroit. Her project will be based in a neighborhood redevelopment project known as Auntie Na's Village and involve the nearby Hope Academy school.

"We admire the commitment to humanitarian work that our Schweitzer Fellows bring to the Detroit community; even more so during this stressful time of recovering from the coronavirus and the need to instill, in young people, the values and core competencies of this fellowship to address the health disparities of our African American and minority communities experience through structural and systemic racism, and the social determinants of health," says President and CEO of Authority Health, Loretta V. Bush. "Authority Health and the national Schweitzer Fellowship share common values. We work to improve health, develop leaders and create change. We believe our new cohort of fellows will do an excellent job to advance this shared mission."

The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship is a national initiative designed to promote humanitarian values and leadership among health and human service graduate students. Detroit is one of 14 chapters in the United States. Fellows are required to identify a problem or opportunity impacting population health, design a sustainable project to provide a positive intervention, and provide a measurement method. There are about 4,000 health and human service professionals nationwide who have successfully completed the fellowship.

The Schweitzer Fellowship is supported by a grant from the Metro Health Foundation.

About Authority Health

Authority Health is a public body corporate engaged with community health centers, governmental and non-governmental organizations to strengthen the health care safety net of Detroit and Wayne County. We manage the nation's second largest primary care graduate medical education teaching health center program, an extensive health insurance enrollment and navigation service, community-based primary care services, and a health data portal for consumer, provider, and academic users.

This is a memo that was orginally disseminated by Authority Health on July 2, 2020.