University of Cincinnati Foundation - Urban Health Project
51 Goodman Drive, Suite 100, P.O. Box 19970
Cincinnati, OH 45219
U.C. Med Mentors
The mission of Urban Health Project (UHP) is two-fold: To create socially responsible physicians well-equipped to face healthcare disparities; and to help improve the healthcare offered in the Cincinnati area by placing medical students in local community agencies.UHP educates, inspires, and challenges medical students through their service to vulnerable populations in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. This produces more socially responsible physicians who have a greater understanding of factors that impact health. While UHP develops future physicians who are passionate about helping and connecting vulnerable populations with local resources, many members of the community benefit.We are grateful for the years of Charles H. Dater Foundation support, which annually has funded 5 medical student interns who work directly with children. We ask that you help us grow the impact by funding 11 interns per year and enable us to plan for the future by pledging funds for 3 years.
Program Goals:
Since its founding in 1986, the Urban Health Project (UHP) has strived to create avenues for medical students at UC College of Medicine to participate in experiences that highlight the transformative possibilities arising from the fusion of service and medical education. Emerging during the height of the AIDS pandemic, UHP was created during a time when medical education predominantly emphasized basic sciences. With a mission of filling the void in the holistic understanding of healthcare, UHP fostered
environments where student doctors could immerse themselves in community-based learning early on in their training. For 37 years, our independent, student-driven nonprofit has remained committed to nurturing this environment and instilling these future physicians with a deeply ingrained sense of responsibility toward the communities they serve. Through collaborating with local nonprofits and engaging with vulnerable populations, UHP facilitates a unique experience for medical students, allowing them to better understand the intricate interplay between social determinants of health and health outcomes to empower their development into more compassionate, empathetic, and socially conscious healthcare professionals.
Program Results:
During the summer of 2023, we successfully recruited and matched nineteen medical students with fourteen nonprofit organizations across the greater Cincinnati area. This success marked a 130% increase in participation compared to the previous year, showcasing the growing enthusiasm and engagement among medical students at UC College of Medicine. Among these participants, twelve interns dedicated themselves full-time, committing 40 hours per week for eight weeks, while seven others engaged
part-time. UHP interns spent the past summer supporting existing workflows at their partner sites and creating interventions targeting identified community needs. These initiatives were diverse, ranging from creating an educational curriculum tailored for Spanish-speaking elementary school students to constructing resource directories for local primary care clinics and analyzing data collected from a community diabetes intervention, among other projects.
Beyond their work at assigned sites, our interns fostered a sense of community amongst themselves, engaging in several experiences. We began our summer with a walking tour of OTR, led by Cincinnati’s Homeless Coalition, and gained a stronger appreciation of the state of affordable housing in the Cincinnati area. Additionally, UHP organized a 4-part educational luncheon series featuring local public health leaders. These sessions provided insightful opportunities to discuss critical topics, including reproductive health, and prompted our interns to question and reconsider preconceived notions about individual and community health. Furthermore, our interns engaged in a Day of Service with Bethesda Family Practice, supporting local community members with home repairs and yard work.
Over the past year, UHP has taken initiatives to increase our visibility and influence within our academic community and the broader Cincinnati area. One of these initiatives includes creating a new role within our organization—the Communications Chair. This team member amplified UHP’s presence through various channels, notably establishing and curating content for our Instagram account (@cincyuhp). Within the last ninety days alone, our Instagram presence has engaged with 284 unique accounts and garnered 238 followers. We are committed to strengthening this online presence as we plan to sustain funding for this position into the upcoming summer. During the summer and fall, our interns were actively engaged in outreach efforts, sharing their experiences with UHP in the “Unscripted” podcast hosted by the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine (UCCOM), presenting a lecture on Cincinnati resources to the incoming class of medical students, and showcasing their summer projects at the annual Research and Service Symposium. Several interns have extended their service commitments to their sites beyond the internship. Notably, two interns who spent their summer leading health classes at First Step Home—a substance use recovery house for women—have continued their involvement by leading the educational arm of a student group at UC titled “Women Leading Healthy Change.”
To further deepen our ties within the academic community at the University of Cincinnati and fortify relationships with local healthcare organizations, we actively recruited the addition of 8 community leaders to our Board of Advisors. By expanding the diversity and expertise within our board, we envision a sharpened focus on addressing the pressing needs of the people of Cincinnati. We have leveraged our existing network of board members and community partners to contact and build relationships with four new potential community partners this year, including two in northern Kentucky, who may offer internship positions to interns next summer. This increased diversity of sites will help us attract more interns to next summer’s program.
We are in the early stages of analyzing longitudinal data collected on the UHP’s impact on past interns. As conclusions from this analysis crystalize, we will begin planning how to build an outreach to other schools with a vision for expanding the number of medical schools with a program offering like UHP. To further support the progression of this objective, we created a new part-time position for an UHP intern to receive funding to dedicate their expertise to the continuation and initial analysis of said longitudinal
research.
Lastly, an essential component of UHP is the stipend we offer medical students during the ten weeks between their first and second years of medical school. They cannot receive financial support from the College of Medicine’s Financial Aid office during this time. A UHP stipend makes it possible for these students to stay in Cincinnati and give their time to the organizations that partner with UHP. For medical students who do not have ample avenues of external support, this financial stressor undoubtedly puts pressure on the decision to pursue one summer opportunity over another. There is an approximately $1,200 discrepancy between what the College of Medicine estimates that students need to live and the amount they’re paid during the summer between M1 and M2, which may represent a prohibitive barrier to participation for students from low socioeconomic status families. Ironically, these students may come from the very communities that UHP aims to serve most directly. To prevent such barriers, we increased the UHP intern stipend from $4,160 to $5,320 to match the cost of living estimates provided by the Office of Financial Aid at the College of Medicine.
Amount: $25,000
Date: March 2023
