Chancellor Michael F. Collins named Robert E. Layne, MEd, adjunct dean for outreach programs and teacher successful radiology, recipient of the 2023 Chancellor’s Award for Advancing Institutional Excellence successful Diversity and Inclusion astatine the 35th yearly tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., held virtually connected Wednesday, Jan. 25.
The T.H. Chan School of Medicine pupil winners of the MLK Semester of Service grants were besides announced, and keynote talker Michael Curry, JD, president and CEO of the Massachusetts League of Community Health, presented “The Other America: Injustice successful Health,” a speech inspired by Dr. King’s 1967 code “The Other America” astatine Stanford University.
Chancellor Collins said Layne’s nomination, submitted by his colleagues, “captured, successful compelling fashion, the myriad contributions of a UMass Chan assemblage subordinate who exemplifies the attributes this grant seeks to celebrate.”
Genuinely humble, a existent relation model, an outstanding ambassador, an fantabulous collaborator, and the epitome of integrity and courtesy were immoderate of the characteristics utilized to picture Layne successful the nomination.
Layne, a longtime pedagogue and mentor who has directed outreach programs since 1996, works to bring students underrepresented successful wellness attraction careers into the science, technology, engineering and mathematics pipeline by partnering with greater Worcester’s nationalist schools, institutions of higher education, businesses, quality work agencies and the region’s youth.
Four teams of T.H. Chan School of Medicine students received MLK Semester of Service Awards to instrumentality assemblage work programs. Managed by the Diversity and Inclusion Office, the grant programme is an inaugural that enhances wellness attraction acquisition for UMass Chan students arsenic they grow the institution’s interaction and scope successful section neighborhoods.
The aesculapian students volition usage the $500 awards to marque escaped oculus screening disposable to Worcester locals, assistance survivors of commercialized intersexual exploitation with aesculapian care, facilitate acquisition sessions connected the hazards of vigor islands and works trees annually successful Worcester, and supply escaped tegument crab screening and dermatology consultation services successful stateless shelters and astatine escaped session events.
The 2023 MLK Semester of Service Student Award projects are:
Seeing Eye to Eye: Enhancing entree to interprofessional attraction astatine Wesley Eye and Ear Clinic
Project objectives: To grow Worcester assemblage members’ entree to escaped oculus screening by encouraging UMass Chan students, ophthalmology residents and attendings to unpaid astatine the Wesley Eye and Ear Clinic.
Students:
Claire Meyerovitz, Jessica Eskander and Danielle Heims-Waldron
Community partner:
Wesley Eye and Ear Clinic nether the Worcester Free Care Collaborative
Breaking aesculapian barriers done advocacy for Worcester survivors
Project objectives: To brace aesculapian and nursing students with survivors of commercialized intersexual exploitation truthful students tin enactment arsenic liaisons for aesculapian and wellness attraction supplier appointments.
Students: Evelyn Semenov, Shivahamy “Shivi” Maheswaran, Stevie Yang, Rosemary Cobb, Ana-Maria Poole and Ariana “Ari” Fantakis Ettorre
Community partners: Living successful Freedom Together and Community Healthlink
Implementing shadiness for a brighter future
Project objectives: To collaborate with Worcester Public Schools and the Worcester Urban Forestry Tree Commission to facilitate acquisition sessions connected the hazards of vigor islands, and an yearly hands-on histrion planting lawsuit for the Worcester community.
Students: Christopher Fay, Maximian “Max” Kinne, Ryan Chen, Adrienne Conza and Yuying Zhang
Community partners: Worcester Public Schools and Worcester Urban Forestry Tree Commission
Bridging the spread of entree to dermatologic attraction successful patients experiencing homelessness
Project objectives: To supply escaped tegument crab screening and dermatology consultation services successful stateless shelters and done escaped session events in Worcester.
Students: Nicole Loranger and Stephanie Choi
Community partners: Veterans Inc., St. John’s Food for the Poor, YMCA of Central Massachusetts and AIDS Project Worcester, Inc.
Keynote talker Michael Curry urged listeners to retrieve the radical who contracted COVID-19 and died during the pandemic and noted that Massachusetts’s precocious fertile successful administering 17. 5 cardinal doses of vaccines was owed to the persistence of advocates who perpetually brought the question of equity to the table.
Curry said that increasing up successful Roxbury and seeing disparities, peculiarly successful wellness outcomes, proved King’s words that of “all the forms of inequality, injustice successful wellness is the astir shocking and the astir inhuman due to the fact that it often results successful carnal death.”
He called connected listeners to admit that King’s prime of words spoke to the societal determinants of wellness past arsenic it does now. He applauded the enactment done astatine assemblage wellness centers established during the Civil Rights Movement that bash the intersectional enactment of addressing societal issues to forestall wellness disparities.
Introducing the conception of weathering, the repeated vulnerability to socioeconomic adversity, governmental marginalization, racism and perpetual favoritism arsenic harmful to health, Curry challenged listeners to reflect.
“I inquire you to commencement reasoning astir successful the enactment that you do, arsenic we speech astir Dr. King’s legacy, to inquire yourselves what are you weathered to and however bash you unweather yourself from those things? How bash you person a consciousness of urgency astir changing the conditions, the circumstances of the radical who are surviving successful our communities?”
“Connecting the dots means that if Dr. King was sitting present close present connected this call, helium would say, determination is unfinished business.”
Curry urged listeners to wage attraction to the wealthiness gap, accomplishment spread and poorness rates and collectively thin to King’s unfinished business.
Related UMass Chan quality stories:
LISTEN: Worcester Pipeline Program inspires students to see wellness and subject careers
Robert Layne named adjunct dean for outreach programs
At MLK tribute, Mary Munson recognized for committedness to diverseness and inclusion successful subject field
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