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Serving up aces in Durham, North Carolina
Schweitzer Fellows for Life Kimberly Cocce and Melissa Hector-Greene are medical students at Duke University School of Medicine. Last year, they partnered worked with Parkwood Elementary Schooland Playworks Durham on a tennis program for children ages seven through 10 designed to increase physical activity. “I’ve come to realize that one of the greatest barriers for children in becoming more active is a lack of mentors and role models who demonstrate that physical fitness provides health benefits and can be fun at the same time,” Cocce says. “Tennis is a wonderful sport for children because it provides cardiovascular exercise, as well as training in agility, strength, and mental focus.”
In Vermont, helping premature babies and their families thrive
Schweitzer Fellows for Life Jessie Evangelista and Janet Trang created a program pairing families with a baby in neonatal intensive care with a family that had successfully brought home a baby after a stay in neonatal intensive care. Evangelista and Trang, both students at the University of Vermont College of Medicine, partnered with theFletcher Allen Health Center for their project. Evangelista shared some of what she learned through the experience with Beyond Boulders.
Raising awareness about HPV among the LGBT community in Central Ohio
Schweitzer Fellow for Life James R. Carter, MPH, a doctoral student at The Ohio State University College of Social Work, realized that there was little awareness of Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) among the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender population. HPV is the most common sexually-transmitted infection and it impacts both men and women. While not everyone who is infected with HPV gets ill, those who do get ill can experience quite serious symptoms ranging from genital warts to certain cancers. The more he learned about HPV, the more Carter wanted to make raising awareness of the infection the focus of his Schweitzer Fellow Project.
In North Carolina, implementing a brain fitness program for those living with Alzheimer’s
Schweitzer Fellows for Life Henry Gerard Colmer and Bryan Neth are medical students at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Last year, partnering with both the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and the Alzheimer's Association, they created an eight- to 10-week cognitive and behavioral program for people living with Alzheimer’s disease.
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