Sharewood: Open to Tufts University School of Medicine

Monday, June 6th from 12:00am to Friday, July 29th, 2022 12:00am (ET)
The application period has ended or been marked as full.

About

This position is open to students from the Tufts University School of Medicine only.
Sharewood is prepared to welcome a fellow in person for 2022.

ORGANIZATION OVERVIEW
“Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA) is a vibrant, innovative health system that serves everyone in need. With over 140,000 patients in Cambridge, Somerville and Boston’s metro-north region, CHA is passionately local. It is proud to provide high quality, essential services like primary care, specialty care, hospital care, emergency services, maternity care and behavioral health in convenient neighborhood locations. CHA patients have seamless access to advanced care for rare or highly complex conditions at its clinical partners - Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Mass. General Hospital for Children (MGHfC).

CHA's work extends far beyond patient care. It operates the nationally accredited Cambridge Public Health Department and community health programs across its service area. It collaborates closely with local governments and non-profits to improve health status and reduce barriers to care. As a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard School of Dental Medicine and Tufts University School of Medicine, CHA is proud to train the health care providers of tomorrow.” ~ https://www.challiance.org/about/about-cha

“The Sharewood Project is a free health education program that provides limited health care services. Sharewood is led by volunteer medical students and physicians affiliated with Tufts University School of Medicine and Cambridge Health Alliance, with help from other health professional students and translators from Tufts University.

Students educate clients about healthy lifestyle, nutrition, exercise, and the importance of medical wellness. Under the supervision of physicians and other healthcare providers, students also provide such services as school physicals, oral cancer screenings, confidential STD/HIV testing, and blood pressure screenings. A major focus of the Sharewood Project is its case management services, which connect clients with primary care physicians, MassHealth, and other social services that they may need.

All services are open to everyone, including the uninsured, and no appointment is necessary.”
https://medicine.tufts.edu/local-global-engagement/sharewood

POSITION DESCRIPTION
Sharewood is a student-run free health education project which provides health services to the medically underserved populations of the Malden and Greater Boston area. It is founded on the principles of sharing with the poor. In 2019, our Tisch Summer Fellow mapped out and described the demographics of the population that we served with a 3 year geomapping project. In 2020, we cultivated relationships with community organizations and updated our systems for patient outreach, while we paused during the COVID pandemic and transitioned community partnerships with the St Paul's Church in Malden and Cambridge Health Alliance for in-person clinic visits. We developed a new focus on Anti-Racism and Anti-Oppression and created a new Sharewood board position for Advocacy as a result of these efforts.

This year, the Tisch Summer Fellow will be focused on Advocacy and Anti-Racism. The themes of Anti-Oppression and Advocacy for those who need our support will come from a number of different lenses, which include, but are not limited to, the following:

* From a cultural and historical perspective, they will engage in research of our local community to learn more about the diversity and development of people of Malden and the MCREW area (Malden/Chelsea/Revere/Everett/Winthrop)

* From a systemic injustice/oppression vs equity building for vulnerable populations perspective, they will identify factors like social determinants of health and other gaps, and partner with community organizations to provide support.

* From a population health perspective, they will develop tools for screening on SDOH and support/outreach for Sharewood patients with more robust training in case management.

* From a clinical perspective, they will bear witness to patient stories, collect potent narratives and turn these stories and empower these people into becoming agents of change.

* From a policy perspective, they will develop an advocacy toolkit to organize advocacy events (e.g. speak with legislators as a group, start a petition on significant issues, partner with community to engage in change), work with local community leaders to make changes and putting their values into practice.

Our future goal will be to integrate the Advocacy board position and the Advocate trainees as patient resource coordinators who can connect patients to community services, provide counseling/therapy/guidance around these areas of need, and strengthen the feedback loop for patients so their voices are heard in these times where too many of us, too often feel breathless, or literally cannot breathe.

Due to COVID pandemic and current closure of Sharewood clinic, the re-opening and re-launch of the physical clinic is TBD. However, when it does, the Sharewood fellow hours may change to include the evenings of Sharewood (which were previously Tuesday evenings.)

Ability to work independently and as part of multi-discplinary teams, data collection and analysis skills, creativity and idea-generation, communication skills, hard work ethic, website programming skills may be useful.

The fellow should have a commitment to health equity and to working with underserved populations.
Supervisor(s)
-
Timeframe
Summer
Credit
No