Two Northwestern MPH Students Named Paul Ambrose Scholars

Erin Dominici and Wenyuan Zhou, two students in the Northwestern Master of Public Health Program, were named Paul Ambrose Scholars. Every year, the Paul Ambrose Scholars Program selects 40 students to attend a Student Leadership Symposium that aims to prepares public health and clinical health professions students to promote change and be leaders in addressing population health challenges. Students work to improve health within their communities through the planning and implementation of a community-based project.

Dominici's project aims to increase access to mental health and community health resources in Chicago by programming, implementing, and sustaining a community asset mapping tool for the Puerto Rican Cultural Center (PRCC), its Vida/SIDA program, and Chicago’s South and West side communities. This project is a continuation of the work done by students in PH 411: Assessment, Planning, and Evaluation and ECE 451: Computing and Social Mobility. The project will involve developing a bilingual mapping application to identify health services in Chicago, creating a database of health service locations, and developing best practices for integrating the tool into clinical use. The ultimate goal of the project is to lower the barriers of Chicago communities to accessing mental health resources by connecting patients to culturally-appropriate, affordable, and local community health services.

Zhou is implementing a pilot project that incentivizes low-income families in Chicago and their children to go to the local library by providing diapers to those who attend interactive health talks at the library. The project is an expansion on a Lurie Uptown Clinic’s current childhood literacy efforts.