Here students will provide monthly updates on their projects and utilize the page as a resource for feedback, guidance, and direction. You can attach documents, images, post links, or use the discussion text box to provide your update.
Student peers and community partners are encouraged to comment, provide suggestions, and ask questions regarding the updates.
Please post all updates for the month of September, 2024 by replying under this thread.
Caroline and I were able to flesh out our project with Dr. K a little more. We have begun to make our lists of food sources for our two neighborhoods of Bond Hill and Walnut Hills. If time permits we will do a full-fledged food map, but that is TBD. We have also updated the IRB to include our portion of the project. During our last meeting with Dr. K we roughly mapped out the rest of our project time with her- we are planning to have our resource ready to provide to participants in her study around November. We’ll get feedback from participants and the community health workers and revise the resource. Caroline and I were also thinking of volunteering some time at a local food bank so we can get some face to face time with the community!
I met with leaders at CYC to learn the results of a recent initiative called REACH, and ways that we might build off this data to evaluate outcomes at Saturday Hoops. The goal of this initiative is to conduct a post-assessment survey across CYC programs that asks about the benefit of experiences in the programs (https://www.cycyouth.org/survey/). Survey responses were recently analyzed. Questions included:
Answer choices were “Absolutely Yes!”, “Yes”, “Not sure”, “No”, or “Not at all”. At least 80% of respondents selected Yes or Absolutely Yes to each question.
We brainstormed a number of ways that we may want to tailor our efforts to assess Saturday Hoops outcomes, eg educational, health, and/or social benefits. I’m currently working on focusing these in to key goals/questions that this service project could address.
I have been working with my community partner by establishing a schedule and a timeline for me to complete my volunteering. I have scheduled a meeting with the leadership team at St. Josephs for the upcoming week now that I am not on an inpatient rotation to further decide which patients would be best for me to focus my volunteering time with, and what activities or goals would be the best to focus on. We have also been working on and have completed the IRB for submission.
I have had the pleasure of receiving and implementing feedback from Dr. Kiesler, Kelly, and Daniel for my IRB for my QI project. I am excited to have more time to dedicate to my project once I return to Cincinnati in November. I am also excited to speak with my community partner for feedback on my ideas. I want to gain approval of my IRB from the mentors I mentioned above before reaching out to my community partners to make it less confusing if changes to my IRB and project are made before the final version.
After meeting with the student and faculty leaders of the SRFC, they identified that their biggest need was overall advocacy for the clinic within the college of medicine and potentially UC health. Since the clinic operates primarily on donations and grant funding, they work with a limited number of resources. The clinic has an impact on the patients within the community as well as on the students that lead and volunteer with the clinic. The goal of this project will be to collect impact stories from patients, volunteers and alumni that were involved with the clinic, and use the information as part of a larger presentation to be given to leaders within the college and UC Health. The goal of these presentations will be introduce the clinic and its mission to these leaders, and demonstrate the impact it has on the community and students. Ultimately we’d like to use these presentations as a means to ask for increased support and backing so that we may be able to secure more resources for the clinic. Two areas where we are hoping to gain support is with obtaining an EMR for the clinic, and allowing us to credential preceptors that are willing to volunteer with the clinic.
Hi all! Major updates for my service project in partnership with Headstart Cincinnati: we were able to meet in August and flesh out the directions for my project and some key objectives. We will be working to increase the number of well-baby visits families in the Early Head Start program, mainly through a patient education campaign. I will primarily be directing my efforts toward developing educational material that stresses the importance of obtaining well-baby checks in accordance with early and periodic screening, diagnostic, and treatment (EPSDT) guidelines. Finally, we aim to provide anticipatory support to parents based on trends identified in partnership with CCHMC providers and nurse educators.
My service project is focused on improving the health of women facing housing insecurity, and I will be partnering with the Esther Marie Hatton Shelterhouse. I met twice with the volunteer coordinators at the Shelterhouse and discussed a plan and timeline for the project. They encouraged the development of educational sessions on women’s health as a way to inform women on life-saving care and preventative measures during often brief stays living at the Shelterhouse. We also discussed how I can collaborate with case managers at the Shelterhouse to ensure women are facilitated in receiving access to insurance coverage and medical appointments.
During the month of September, I was able to meet with PWC to discuss our rough plans and timeline for the upcoming year. I was able to reach to the individuals within the pulmonary department at CCHMC to work on getting myself integrated into the asthma clinic. This included reaching out to Dr. Guilbert to introduce myself and work on setting up a meeting in the fall.
My community partners, Dr. Goroncy and Mona, and I met in August to outline what we wanted out of a community health worker training program. Using that information, we completed an LOI as the first step in getting funding for our project. We should find out this week if we are invited to continue the application process for the grant. I am also meeting with Dr. Goroncy this week to determine next steps for our project. I have also been volunteering in WH community gardens throughout the summer and attending WH health committee meetings to learn more about other projects/volunteer opportunities.
And sorry for not posting to the thread! I can’t figure out how to delete it…
As Jenna mentioned, we were able to start working on more of a long term plan for our project. When we started this school year, we had a general idea that we would make some kind of food resource guide that could be used in Dr. K’s study, but didn’t have a great idea what that would look like. Now we have planned that we will make a map (or, depending on time, a precursor to the map) of resources. We will spend most of our time actually driving around the communities and going to the stores to ensure that we have the most accurate info for our guide – ie what kind of food the store has, what their hours are, if they take snap/wic/etc. Additionally, we hope to start volunteering at a food bank that will be affiliated with Dr. K’s project, but we are waiting until our rotations are wrapped up this fall to start that so we have more time availability.
Please post all updates for the month of October 2024 by replying in this thread.
During October, I have been working on my IRB which will hopefully be finished and submitted by the end of next week. I have also been working with my community partner and volunteering to complete 1:1 time with one of the residents who they thought could most benefit from some attention. We have been spending time together doing Halloween arts and crafts, and getting ready for their annual “trunk or treat” event next week, which I will be attending with her. I have been helping get her a costume, and we also have plans to go on an outing next Friday, perhaps to the zoo or the movies, though that is to be decided.
We learned early this month that we were not invited to apply for the grant we submitted an LOI for. This is disappointing because it was a truly huge amount of money that would have funded the whole project for 3 years and there is no comparable grant open right now (unless you know of one!). Additionally, the community leader I have worked closely with, Mona, has been focusing on her main project so we have delayed our next meeting. Next steps will be a regroup meeting with Mona and my community partner to plan a survey. We hope to use the survey to gather information on what community members already know about Community Health Workers and what they hope to gain from them. I have drafted my IRB submission for this survey and hope to gather the data during December-January at Mona’s monthly gatherings, Mochas with Mona.
This month I have finalized my IRB and will be moving on to actively recruiting participants in obtaining their anecdotes for my cultural humility narrative. I plan to continue developing relationships with the residents at JHH by attending community events 1x a week or volunteering at the local soup kitchen. I will also be updating my own reflections on each encounter to compile into the final presentation. I plan to bolster the presentation with some research on guide discussion on Working with vulnerable populations in the healthcare field and the importance of cultural humility.
Jenna and I have finished driving around and locating grocery and convenience stores in the three neighborhoods of interest. We have visited most of the stores in person to document what kinds of foods are available and the types of benefits accepted by each. We are finishing up revisions for the IRB and have set up meetings with community members to discuss what other resources would be beneficial for the food guide we are developing. I will start volunteering with a local food bank later this week, which will also help me better understand different food resources in the city.
This month I’ve been able to make some good progress in my partnership with Head Start. I have worked on study materials including survey questions and a pre-survey blurb and have started to look into resources such as WHO, CDC, and AAP to help develop educational context for our Early Head Start families for our quality improvement project. I have nearly completed my IRB and was able to walk through it with both my project team and Dr. Kiesler and Daniel. I recently returned from an away rotation, and have discussed upcoming opportunities for in person volunteering with the kids which I am very exciting about. I am waiting on the final input from my partner prior to submitting the IRB and getting thing started!
This month I was able to work on the IRB which is almost finalized, and am now in the process of reaching out to potential participants. I also worked on developing questions for patients to better understand where else they seek access to healthcare, and how they discovered our clinic in the first place. I haven’t had a ton of time to volunteer with the organization so far, but I’m hoping to change that starting in November!
During the month of October, I was able to meet with Dr. Guilbert to discuss our plan for the upcoming months. She was able to offer me advice on how to best identify patient’s who may benefit from housing referral and then gave me instructions on how to actually complete a rereferral. Additionally, we further hammered down good days for me to target on my project. Finally, I was able to start working on the IRB and will hopefully have that completed and approved in the near future, so that we can begin the process of identifying and referring good candidates for PWCs interventions. In the upcoming future, I am planning to attend a home visit for an already identified participant in the program.
At the end of October, I sat down with Adrienne Wiley, our main point of contact for my project with the Bearcat Eye Service (BES) at the Healing Center. We had a great conversation where she told me BES has full support from the Healing Center and asked me to let her know how they could help us going forward (space, capital, grants, etc.). We also spoke about the IRB I plan to submit. She had no additional feedback but just wanted to clarify the purpose of the project and she let me know that January would be the best time to start giving the survey out. This is because December/Holiday times are very busy when they get a lot of new members for their events. Thus, I will try to get the IRB approved before January when I hope to start giving the survey to Healing Center members.
During the month of October, I worked with my community partner to finalize an IRB proposal that details the aims of study and ensures that the survey we are conducting will be collected in a manner that is accessible for participants and protects their information. I also developed the survey, which includes collecting demographic and socioeconomic data, how participants have historically accessed women’s healthcare, and how they have viewed their relationships with physicians in the past. The goal is to identify gaps in preventive women’s healthcare, so that participants can be referred to a care provider during their stays at the Shelterhouse.
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Please post all updates for the month of November 2024 by replying under this thread.
During the month of November I have continued to volunteer with my community partner, doing numerous 1:1 volunteering time and then also taking my patient out on trips to the museum and the bowling alley for a birthday party. I have also had my IRB approved.
I’ve run into a bit of a snag on my project this month. Dr. Goroncy and I struggled a bit to get an update from our community partner, who was unable to join our group meeting. I attended one of the community meetings, Table Talks, so I could catch up with our partner Mona and vet it as a venue for doing my survey. At that meeting, I learned Mona had secured funding and was much further along on training community health workers than we had realized. Which is great! But my survey was originally intended to guide the training, so it is not terribly useful now. I have continued with various volunteering projects like the community garden, and now some winter-focused things like making signage for clothing drives. Mona, Dr. Goroncy and I have a meeting scheduled next week and I am hoping to find out what help Mona needs with training the CHWs. As an additional/backup plan, I have reached out the person running a food pantry at a Walnut Hills church to see if I can do a needs assessment with her guests and support some of her ongoing work.
Our main milestone this month was focusing the goals of the survey in order to facilitate writing/reviewing/submitting the IRB. This was accomplished by several meetings and conversations with CYC leadership and other mentoring organizations in Cincinnati about ongoing research, topics targeted by grants/funding, and design of the survey. We received IRB approval this week!
Caroline and I have created a first rough draft of our food resource guide for Walnut Hills, Bond Hill, and Avondale, but have not heard back from Dr. K in regards to feedback or next steps. That is our main hold up at this point.
This past month, we have discussed with the team at PWC and Dr. Newman & Dr. Ryan (who have already been involved in the study) what our project goals were and if any additional changes needed to be made to our IRB. We have also learned more about why the project has stalled in the past and what barriers are in place that need to be addressed in the coming year. Additionally, the home assessment for one client already referred by the pulmonary clinic was planned during the month of Nov. and I attended in early Dec.
During the month of November, I received IRB approval for my project at the women’s shelter and developed a women’s health survey after collaboration with my community partner.
Please post all updates for the month of December 2024 by replying under this thread.
I’m excited and pleased with the pace of my project and thankful that I had a pretty clear idea going into this course and incredible support from Dr. Kiesler, Dan, Dr. Kelly, and the Healing Center. As it stands now, my IRB has been approved, and I have shared the survey I intend to use for BES stakeholders & patients with Dr. Kelly, Dr. Kieser, and Dan to elicit any feedback they have before I send it out. Ms. Wiley from the Healing Center said it would be best to wait on surveys until January because there are so many happenings at the Healing Center during the holiday times as is that it may add unnecessary chaos. That being said I may start sending out surveys to BES students, residents, and faculty. Happy holidays everyone!
I am continuing to work with my partner by completing 1:1 volunteering with my participant and taking her on outings so she is able to leave the center and explore the world.
I am continuing to volunteer and interact with JHH residents atleast once a week, while working on the narrative reflections as part of a larger module. I am not sure how that presentation will look, but leaning toward some sort of powerpoint.
I needed to pivot my project plan since my initial project did not need my assistance. I connected with the folks who run a food pantry and a garden at a church in Walnut Hills and am working with them to a) survey people using the food pantry to better tailor their services and b) help them develop cooking tips to share at the food pantry to encourage usage of the garden produce. I’ll have to dial up the pace to get the IRB updated and submitted so I can administer the survey at the end of January.
Jenna and I have worked extensively on our food resource guide and are awaiting final feedback from Dr. K. We have visited all the grocery/convenient stores in Walnut Hills, Avondale, and Bond Hill, and I am now trying to make contact with the different food banks in those communities to verify what resources they provide and what documentation they need for clients.
Dr. K reported that someone on her team will add finishing touches to the guide, then it will be sent out for it’s first round of feedback from community health workers! Meanwhile we have been volunteering with Freestore Foodbank!
Hey Caroline! I’m helping a church in Walnut Hills improve the data they have for grant applications. Would you be willing to share the info you got on other WH food pantries?
Our main focus this month was to work on the survey that we plan to use starting in January. Happy holidays all!!
During the month of December, I was able to participate in my first housing assessment. Additionally, I reviewed our formal IRB at CCHMC and discussed with the PI to make sure no changes were needed to be made to accommodate my work on the project.
In December, I concluded my interview of alumni for my project. I was able to interview 5 total which was my initial goal. I would have liked to interview more, however I realized there would be a point of diminishing returns, as presenting such large quantities of information would take a significant amount of time, and would not be beneficial for the presentation as a whole.
During the month of December, I visited my community partner to host educational sessions on women’s health and administered a survey on women’s health to identify needs in care.
Please post all updates for the month of January 2025 by replying under this thread.
This month I am continuing to work with my community partner by volunteering 1:1 with one of their residents. I hope to take her on more outings outside of St. Joseph Home and into the broader community with the help of the nurses and DSPs at St. Joseph Home. I plan to start to go through the information I have about St. Joseph Home for the presentation we have later this spring.
I am excited about this month because it should be the month I get to start sending out my survey. At this moment I am simply fine-tuning how we send out the survey. Dr. Kelly made some great points that some Bearcat Eye Service (BES) patients may need assistance completing the survey due to literacy challenges. At the same time, an oral approach (reading the question to patients and recording their answers) may limit their responses/honesty. Ideas I had were to have a 3rd party or someone from BES who isn’t involved with the screening clinic that day help with the survey. That way if they do need help it would limit the impact on their answer knowing it is anonymous. I also considered using AI like ChatGPT to make the questions at the lowest reading level possible. I’m waiting to hear back from Dr. Kelly about what option she thinks would be best, but I have faith she’ll have an idea given all of her research experience.
This month, I am continuing volunteering at the Freestore Foodbank. I have volunteered in a variety of settings with the foodbank, but primarily at the Bea Street Market, where I restock shelves, bag groceries, and assist clients. It has been eye opening to see the variety of resources available for clients, and how the foodbank has helped make food more accessible for them – but I can still see the limitations in food accessibility that our pamphlet project helps to address. Specifically, most if not all clients have personal cars to get to the foodbank location since it is not easily accessible otherwise, but our pamphlet aims to help clients who do not have reliable transportation to grocery stores or foodbanks.
Additionally, I am continuing to work on the pamphlet project, but am awaiting to hear back from our PI regarding the survey we hope to send to CHWs. I am looking forward to getting feedback on our pamphlet and to improve it this spring.
This month I re-did my IRB to fit my new project. I wrote up my survey and got feedback on it from my stakeholders at The Church of the Advent. I also audited the grant applications the church has already completed to help them pull out info they may need to reuse and to identify gaps in their supporting data. I plan to survey guests at next Wednesday’s Open Door Food Pantry. I’ll use that data to make recommendations to the food pantry and community garden on how they can best serve their neighbors. I’m also dabbling in some random volunteer activities: helping at the food pantry, making flyers for coat drives, etc.
This month I have not been able to visit my site due to being busy with rotation. However, I have been working on creating a cohesive presentation using my narrative on my experience working with individuals who have faced homelessness and research on cultural humility when working with vulnerable populations. I would love for it to read more like a module for future service providers, but I feel like it just reads like story. Essentially looking to combine those two so will try to look at other models on the internet. Maybe look to make it more engaging rather than just something for someone to read/absorb.
I was able to begin to attend pulmonary clinic during this past month. It has been so fun to work with the doctors and social workers who may benefit from the PWC programming. I have also begun to identify barriers which prevent patients from getting connected. I have noticed that there is a large trust barrier and patients remain skeptical about the program and what it can provide. I am hoping to create a pamphlet with information about the program which may help mend this barrier.
During January, I continued to work with my community partner to distribute our pre-survey on Well Child Care knowledge and potential barriers to consistent attendance. Due to some barriers and delays, the survey was finalized/ first shared closer to the holiday season – resulting in a low response rate. We discussed and executed efforts to increase the awareness of the project to increase the number of responses over the first three weeks of January, which went from 12 to 27 responses overall. This was lower than our initial goal of 50+, but we opted to continue to move forward with analyzing survey data to develop and share educational content.
During this month, I continued to visit the women’s shelter. I hosted educational sessions on cervical cancer prevention, abnormal uterine bleeding, and hosted debriefs and open dialogue sessions.
Please post all updates for the month of February 2025 by replying under this thread.
This month got off to a strong start since we had a clinic on the 1st of February and this was the first day I shared the survey. So far we have 13 responses which include patients, medical students, residents, physicians, and staff from the healing center.
Our next clinic is on March 1st, so I’ll send another reminder and collect more responses on that day. Depending on when our presentations are, I will either have this be the last data collection clinic day, or if time permits, I will collect data at the April clinic. Whatever will give me enough time to analyze the data and create a poster of some sort that meets our course guidelines!
I was able to administer my survey at one of the food pantry days at the end of January. Some people declined to answer the survey because “what could I add? Y’all are doing everything right.” So that was nice feedback! I got 16 total responses out of about 40-50 guests that morning. I have been analyzing the data and using it to find opportunities to improve their grants and broaden their impact. I will share the data back with the pantry and garden managers and other stakeholders soon. We had originally intended to make recipe cards to help guests try new produce, but the survey suggests that’s not really an issue for them. So I may just provide the garden manager with a template to label any produce she brings to the pantry from the garden. Otherwise, I am beginning to wrap up my project and starting on my presentation.
This month has been slower from a project standpoint than anticipated. We are still waiting for IRB approval for our survey, and it is unclear when that will happen. We are awaiting survey results to make further adjustments to our food resource guide. In the meantime, I have focused my time volunteering at the Freestore Foodbank Bea Taylor Market and healthy harvest mobile markets. I have been trained on all volunteer positions at the market – cashier, grocery bagging, restocking – and now know many of the employees at the market. Jenna and I are also starting to think about what our presentation will look like and how we will hand off this project to next year’s Service and Advocacy students, as our PI’s research project will continue for the next few years and would be a great opportunity for future students.
This month has been slower from a project standpoint as I have been back in the hospital, and based on my 1:1’s schedule, I would not be able to visit her after getting out of the hospital or on the weekends. I hope to be able to work with her again after I am done with my rotations. Otherwise I have begun to think about my presentation and what information I would want to include in it and what I want to focus on during my presentation.
This month I reviewed the interviews that I conducted with alumni, summarized the information and put it into the larger presentation that will hopefully be given to the dean of UCCOM. This month I met with SRFC leadership to review the presentation, and discuss final touches. We are currently working to schedule a date for a meeting which should hopefully be in early March.
Outside of my project itself, I have been started spending a signifianct amount of time volunteering with the Healing Center. It’s been a lot of fun working with fellow volunteers and learning more about the workings of the organization as a whole.
This month, I was finally able to develop an educational pamphlet for families participating in the Early Head Start program. After meeting with my project team to discuss our pre-survey findings, we solidified key information to incorporate into the pamphlet. I did a lot of self-guided learning and spent time making multiple iterations on Canva (which I love). The final version was sent to my team with the hopes that it would be disbursed across multiple Head Start centers in Cincinnati via paper and digital copy. I will attach some Canva-generated pictures of what the printed version should look like! There is a survey QR code within that will allow families to share feedback on how helpful the resource is, finger crosses for a decent amount of responses!
One challenge I have faced was being able to get in-person volunteer hours throughout the school year. Towards the end of the month, I was finally able to get on-site for the first time after getting logistics in order. My schedule does not permit me to spend more time on site until mid-March – but I plan to spend a lot of hours volunteering between then and April. While on-site, I help out day to day-to-day daycare tasks with the kids, as well as minor operational tasks to help things run smoothly 🙂