NEWS

Local angles: Chadbourne, Chapel Hill, Charlotte, Naples, Fla.

Students chosen ‘Schweitzer Fellows,’ will use support for service projects

By BLAKE ALLEN
UNC School of Public Health

CHAPEL HILL -- Five students from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have been chosen as North Carolina Schweitzer Fellows to provide funding and support for their community service projects relating to health-care needs.

The five UNC fellows – Renee Ferrari, Rani Shankar, Shelley Summerlin-Long, Jena Ivey and Sylvia Lee – are among 19 students selected statewide this year.

Ferrari, a second-year master’s degree student from Chapel Hill, and Shankar, a first-year master’s degree student from Mecklenburg County, will work together to initiate a mentor program for UNC Birthpartners, a hospital-based volunteer doula program implemented by UNC Hospitals in January 2001. Both students are studying maternal and child health in the School of Public Health.

Summerlin-Long, a second-year student from Naples, Fla., will launch a contraception and prenatal care education program in Craven County. She is a dual-degree student in the schools of public health and social work.

Ivey, a second-year student in the School of Pharmacy from Chadbourne, will develop a health literacy program for senior citizens in Orange County. Third-year School of Medicine student Sylvia Lee, from Charlotte, will offer an education program for Orange County school teachers.

"We look forward to working with such inspiring students," said Dr. Trisha White, vice president of the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship.

The North Carolina Schweitzer Fellows Program is part of the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship, founded in 1940 by Schweitzer to support the work at his hospital in Lambaréné, Gabon, during World War II.

In 1991, the fellowship began sponsoring programs in Boston. Today, there are urban programs in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago and Pittsburgh, and rural and urban programs in New Hampshire-Vermont and North Carolina. More than 700 students from schools of medicine, nursing, public health, law and other related fields have served as U.S. Schweitzer Fellows over the past decade.

Through the program, students strengthen their leadership skills and commitment to public service by working with local communities and health professionals.

Fellows will work with local agencies to carry out their projects and to contribute at least 200 hours of direct service to the agency and the community. The fellowship also encourages fellows to choose public service careers. Past fellows have described their fellowship experience as one of the most important times of their lives.

Since 1998, eight students in the School of Public Health have been selected for participation in the fellowship program. Their projects have included the development of a training program for HIV test counseling at the Student Health Action Coalition, a training manual focusing on neighborhood leadership and activism around health issues affecting the Latino community in Durham, a project focusing on sexual and reproductive health needs of women with severe mental illnesses, and a peer education program on sexually transmitted diseases for male inmates of a detention center.

For more information on the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship, visit www.schweitzerfellowship.org.

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(Allen, a recent graduate of the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication, is from Elizabethtown, N.C.)

School of Public Health contact: Lisa Katz at (919) 966-7467 or lisa_katz@unc.edu

News Services contact: Deb Saine at (919) 962-8415