Student Outreach Resource Center

The Student Outreach Resource Center (SOURCE) at Johns Hopkins University College of Nursing allows students to immerse themselves in community service and real-world opportunities with more than 100 community-based organizations. The center provides students with service-learning credit and a wide variety of options to participate in interprofessional outreach with colleagues from the university’s schools of medicine and public health. Many of SOURCE’s opportunities for academic, professional, and personal development consist of local projects focusing on East Baltimore neighborhoods in close proximity to the university’s East Baltimore campus.

Wellness on Wheels

In April 2021, the Kansas State University College of Veterinary Medicine’s Wellness on Wheels, or WOW, vehicle completed its first trip after more than two years of fundraising, design, and production. The vehicle allows members of the college’s shelter medicine team to deliver basic veterinary care to pets whose owners have limited financial resources, physical limitations to access care, or insufficient knowledge about the importance of veterinary medicine. Providing routine client wellness exams through WOW gives students caseload experience with the added value of serving populations with distinct demographic differences from the majority of veterinary school enrollment.

Community Wellness Initiative

The Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine’s (PCOM) Community Wellness Initiative (CWI) was created in June 2021 by the university president to support existing projects and foster cross-campus collaboration to create, plan, and execute new opportunities to serve the communities of all three PCOM locations. The mission of the CWI is to foster a culture of holistic health and well-being as a core social value. The initiative seeks to create educational and health services programming and resources that support and sustain the physical, mental, nutritional, and environmental wellness of the college’s surroundings.

Latina STEM Fellowship

The TCU and UNTHSC School of Medicine recently held a Mini Medical School program in collaboration with Tarrant County College and its Latina STEM Fellowship (LSF). The LSF program encourages young Latinx girls and women from area middle schools, high schools, and community colleges to become interested in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) through skill-building, career exploration, education planning, and mentorship. The innovative Mini Medical School offered unique, hands-on health care experiences for LSF participants with the assistance of medical students.

Community Vaccination Sites

Faculty, students, and alumni of the University of Houston College of Nursing (UH CON) have spent hundreds of hours providing COVID-19 vaccinations in partnership with hospitals, community venues, county health facilities, and the UH student health center. In anticipation of the need for vaccine assistance, UH CON changed its curriculum for the spring 2021 semester and provided students with a boot camp to learn the basics of taking vital signs, donning and doffing personal protective equipment, and administering intermuscular injections. In May, the college received a proclamation from Fort Bend County for its extensive service in vaccinating the community.

National Black Nurses Association

The Rochester chapter of the National Black Nurses Association, sponsored by the University of Rochester School of Nursing, led significant efforts for COVID-19 testing in its community, particularly for inner-city populations. Once vaccines became available, the association subsequently provided education about the vaccine and administered dosages for these same communities. It also offered financial support through a local grant to the Roc-City Sicklers, a community organization serving individuals with sickle cell disease, many of whom were significantly impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.●

This article was published in our December 2021 issue.

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