Please respond to the prompts in the discussion board below:
Have you met with your partner to discuss project ideas? What are some ideas you’ve discussed?
What needs do you anticipate for successful project development and implementation (eg. Staff/personnel, materials, surveys, data collection, timeline/schedule, participant recruitment, etc)?
Street Med and I have a project- I’m helping them select meds to carry with them on the van to eliminate the time between prescription and treatment. Very excited about helping them develop the mobile substance use treatment program too!
Here are some survey questions I have in mind as a needs assessment: would love thoughts on other questions to include:
For street med staff:
For patients
This is what I have so far. Working on getting the RedCap surveys drawn up soon!
I am working with Mantle Center and Dr. Dalila on our project exploring the impacts of climate change on mental health via a community engagement-based project. Currently, we have a “Climate Cafe” scheduled for August 1st, where we will play games and provide education on climate change. At the event, we will announce our project and invite anyone interested to apply to participate. In order to have success in this first leg of the recruitment process, we really need good attendance to the event. Thus far, we have placed fliers around the community to help spread the word. However, we haven’t received many responses back. I hope the attendance at the climate cafe is good, so that we can share the project with the attendees! Otherwise, we will need to do additional outreach via another avenue to recruit for the project and push our timeline a bit. Timeline wise, we need to finish data collection by mid-October to provide enough time for data analysis, as the grant for the project “expires” at the end of this year.
I am working with Cradle Cincinnati. We are beginning our project on analyzing data on sleep-related newborn deaths in Hamilton County. We hope to create one-pagers with this data for individual hospitals. We may also analyze the data to see what disparities exist in sleep-related newborn deaths. We need the data on newborn deaths in the county. We hope to submit an IRB in the coming weeks and move on from there.
I will also volunteer at their events; they have a variety of events supporting pregnant moms and moms of newborns. There are also community events and health fair booths.
I am working with the Student Run Free Clinic (SRFC) and plan to focus on expanding clinic hours. Currently, the clinic is only operating Saturday mornings for about 3 hours. The clinic has a lot of amazing resources, including the ability to draw basic labs, but with the time constraints there is a limited number of patients we can handle on any one clinic day. The thought right now is to also have clinic hours Thursday evenings. Staff wise, the biggest hurdle will likely be ensuring we have preceptor availability. But I don’t anticipate finding medical student volunteers to be a big issue, since I know clinic sign-ups tend to be filled quickly and another benefit to these extra hours would be giving students more opportunities to volunteer and get involved.
Hopefully the pictures load. It’s not completely finished yet because the water tank is not sitting up on the stand. Part of my project was to help finish the water collection system that will use gravity fed irrigation to water plants in the garden during dry times. In order to utilize gravity to get the water to its destination, the tank had to be elevated quite high, hence the stand. This will allow the garden to continue feeding the community unfavorable weather.
The second portion of the project is still in the planning phase. The collection of community gardens in Walnut Hills is interested in creating food independence in a sustainable way for the people who live there. I would like to explore what this looks like for the community members. I anticipate this will require an initial survey to gauge the interest of the local gardens and the community members who utilize these gardens.
The pictures were in the proper format in the original post.
My project is concerning expanding lab access at SRFC. I have met with both Dr. Kiesler and the SRFC Healing Center contact to discuss project ideas. Some of the things we have talked about include possible project objectives, the people to reach out to, and the physical considerations for improving labs within SRFC. Specifically, Adrienne, the partner at SRFC, gave me some helpful advice on how to view the project and how community members can and do find ways to access transportation and take charge in their health if needed. For a successful project, I need some better and continuing communication with the lab contact at UC. I feel like they are the biggest hurdle to truly beginning the project. I also expect communication with the SRFC leaders to help have input and create protocols for these labs. Otherwise, I feel confident in creating these mechanisms.
St. Francis Seraph Foot Care for the Souls, led by NP Beverly Clayton, and I have met as I volunteered there. I appreciated the opportunity to engage in their daily workflow and provide relief for patients experiencing foot conditions. My project will be addressing their most important need which is staffing. The clinic is well supplied and multiple footcare needs can be taken care of there. However, skilled staffing remains an issue.
An idea we had was connecting with the College of Nursing to create a wound or foot care elective to hone nursing students’ skills in complex foot conditions while also providing patients with experienced volunteers. I anticipate spending time forming connections with faculty at the nursing school and setting up curriculums.
For volunteers not of medical backgrounds, I will also be creating a PDF and if possible, a video guide on treating common foot problems presented in the clinic. These resources will help non volunteers provide quality care and may even be further developed to guide the opening of a foot care center at secondary locations. I will need to collect information on all the steps and resources used for foot care at the clinic.
My community partner is Meals on Wheels. I spent the beginning of the summer having meetings with various department heads to gain a better understanding of the organization, the needs of individual departments, and the needs of the organization as a whole. I’ve had several meetings discussing project ideas. One of the main needs identified right now is development of an improved survey and better survey implementation for the organization to gain more valuable insight into their impact on the population they serve as well as what next steps the organization could take to improve its impact. I plan to work with their development team to assist in updating their general satisfaction surveys, improving response rate, data collection, and ultimately data analysis. Having an improved response rate would not only help them better understand their organization’s impact on the population that they serve but would also provide them with data that can be used when they apply for grants to further their work.
I have been able to meet with The Caring Place to discuss project ideas. Their choice food pantry is an amalgamation of donations from various sources and their stock rotates depending on those donations. We are thinking of completing a needs assessment through client interviews and surveys to understand how we can best tailor donations to support what clients find most useful. The Caring Place also delivers a supplemental box of food from Freestore Food Bank to clients age 60+. They would like assistance or ideas on how to expand this program for those who may have physical limitations and are not able to come to the food bank in person. We are also considering about doing a food labeling system for the pantry to help clients quickly identify foods that support specific nutritional goals.
I anticipate needing to have survey materials ready by November and to conduct the needs assessment in Jan-Feb of 2027. I also hope that volunteering more at the pantry and gaining insight from the regular volunteers will help me with the project design.
I had the privilege of touring the facilities of PWC this mont, where I saw demos of the various home repair services they provide. So far I have had a few meetings with the PWC team as well as a larger meeting with all of the researchers at Children’s who are partnering with them for studies. We have played out the framework for my project which may be able to build off a separate ongoing project and IRB. The plan is to retrospectively chart review patients who were referred to PWC from the CLEAR program, and assess if their asthma health outcomes have improved after home visits/renovation.
A barrier we are encountering is how to select matched controls for this study, and whether the data collection can be automated or manual. Because the IRB is already complete, I will be meeting with the PIs running those projects throughout the summer to figure out which data collection methods will work best for this project.
I am working with Hanger Clinic to create free decoration kits for infant cranial helmets. We have discussed at length what can be included in the kits as well as making them accessible and easy to use – including as many of the needed materials as possible and changing the designs to fit new helmet structures.
This week I will be delivering many decoration kits to Hanger clinic for families! I currently have 4 different designs produced. I am also thinking about reaching out to Children’s Neurosurgery to see if I can give out the kits there as well. It will be important for me to collect feedback from the families who use the kits, also in consideration of the upcoming IRB, I need to consider what qualitative/quantitative data I want to collect.
I tried attaching pdf of instruction sheet, but it unfortunately will not upload.
I am working with May We Help, an organization that makes or adapts equipment and toys for individuals with disabilities. My project will involve improving the process of collecting feedback from clients; currently this process is simply a survey sent out after the solution is delivered, and the response rate is very low. My goal is to increase this, collect the data, and determine what needs clients have after receiving a solution and how we can encourage them to reach out to us with issues or changing needs.
Additionally, the organization is interested in gathering testimonials and photos in order to better share what they do with the community, potential clients, and sponsors. There was also an idea to use photos to create an online database that clients can use to get ideas for what sort of equipment/toy they would like. Collecting this information will likely involve home visits which I am very excited to participate in!
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My apologies for the late discussion board here– my July updates were that I was approaching the project from two standpoints:
For 1. I have met with a social EM fellow and am working on creating a list of PCPs who would take care of folks who aren’t ready to stop using IV drugs
For 2. I am meeting with caracole to create a survey (to help identify what to put in kits) and the kits themselves. This will require surveys, someone to administer and collect the surveys, and funding for the safe testing kits (which was originally a grant that has since been taken away). Recruitment/participation will be based on caracole’s clientele, specifically at their empowerment groups.
I have been attending UC SRFC’s monthly meetings to get an idea of areas where I could help. A big need is getting the EMR up and running for the clinic, which I hope to get involved with. There are also opportunities to bring more preventive health screening to the clinic, specifically cervical cancer screenings, that I would love to help out with as well.
To help with project development, I anticipate that we would need to create protocols that could describe how we can implement the EMR in our clinic. It may also be helpful to recruit current clinic members to join the project for their input, as well as for continuity of the project after this year. Luckily, we have secured funding for the project, so this should not be a barrier.
Alrighty- our project is in motion. Currently working on a lit review with Dr. Ryan and Dr. Della Porta to update the TtSRU website for OUD. (have a few ideas of updates at this time, working on literature support and the right avenues to make it happen)
Going to collab with community members to ask survey questions and find out what they need from a safe testing kit before we 1. create a brochure to include in the kit and 2. create/distribute the kit itself!
Feeling like foundation is laid right now just have to actually take intentional steps toward it.
Will be trying to attend the empowerment groups next week to ask my survey questions and get an idea of community needs!
During the month of July, I met with the leadership of Ripley County EMS to review the current status of the community paramedicine program and discuss the ongoing challenges affecting its sustainability.
The existing community paramedicine program was designed to connect Ripley County residents with community resources, including housing and food assistance, while also providing basic medical care, health education, and guidance. However, efforts to address these broader social needs highlighted two significant challenges: the limited availability of community resources in rural areas and the fact that many of these services fall outside the traditional training and expertise of EMS clinicians.
We discussed potential modifications to the program to improve its sustainability and effectiveness. As part of this process, I reviewed community paramedicine protocols and program structures from EMS departments across the country. I also spoke with an EMS physician currently involved in reviewing community paramedicine guidelines in Ohio provided some good feedback and resources to give this program better direction.
Next steps include working with Ripley County EMS leadership to restructure the community paramedicine program and further evaluate its funding model, medical direction, clinical protocols, and potential scope of services. The goal will be to develop a sustainable model that aligns the program with the needs of the local community while remaining feasible within the resources and capabilities of the EMS system.