Community Engagement

Chicago Street Medicine aims to improve the health and well-being of people who are experiencing unsheltered homelessness. Our approach is two-fold: first, we go on street runs, providing basic medical care, resources, and connections to social services; and second, we conduct research on and work to educate the community about issues that disproportionately affect the health of the homeless. 

Contact: Andrew Travis and Julianna Kenny-Serrano
Faculty Advisor: George Weyer, MD, Department of Medicine

Our mission is to foster collaboration among medical student-run free clinics across Chicagoland to enhance the quality of care for our patients by promoting best practices, sharing resources, and building community. The Chicagoland Free Clinics Consortium (CFCC) was founded to establish collaboration across student run free clinics to better serve uninsured and underinsured communities in the city. The CFCC is a network of the 15+ Chicago area Student-Run Free Clinics from 6 Chicagoland medical schools: Northwestern, Rosalind Franklin, Loyola, UIC, Rush, and UChicago. Our programming teaches students about clinical care in the limited resource setting as well as patient education, quality improvement, and leadership skills. Each year we host an annual conference, sponsor a series of thematic workshops, and fund innovative projects carried out by students. Through this work we empower students to serve as leaders in education and service, collaborating across institutional boundaries and serving under-resourced communities in Chicago. 

Contact: Simon Han and Sen Kalidoss
Faculty Advisor: James Woodruff MD, Department of Medicine and Wei Wei Lee MD, Department of Medicin

We partner with the Greater Chicago Food Depository to supply food to patients and their families at the University of Chicago Medicine through 11 open-access food pantries across the medical campus.

Contact: Megan Teramoto
Faculty Advisor: Stacy Tessler Lindau, MD, MA Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology

The purpose of this organization shall be to provide undergraduate and medical students an opportunity to serve as mentors and friends to minority high school students who are underrepresented in medicine. The definition of minorities who are underrepresented in medicine as defined by the American Association of  Medical Colleges is: ‘Underrepresented in medicine means those racial and ethnic populations that are underrepresented in the medical profession relative to their numbers in the general population.’ These high school students come from high schools throughout the area to the University of Chicago campus once a month where they participate in a variety of lectures, discussions, and hands-on activities with the goal of giving insight into the life as a health professional as well as an opportunity to connect with medical students and physicians.

Contacts: Justin Banks
Faculty Advisor: Abdullah Pratt, MD, Department of Medicine

We aim to increase awareness and understanding of health disparities and inequities for communities affected by incarceration. We will provide students opportunities to engage with clinicians and communities involved in Cook County Jail and CCHHS. We want to provide opportunities for medical students and the UCM community to further engage with discussions surrounding police and prison abolition and our role as healthcare professionals in interrogating and dismantling the carceral system.

Contact: Reagan Dunham and Ashley Gordon
Faculty Advisor: John Schneider, MD, Department of Medicine

On a Mission for Nutrition is an organization that was formed to address the obesity disparity on the South Side of Chicago. Born out of a project emanating from the Health Care Disparities in America course at Pritzker, On a Mission for Nutrition is an after-school program that educates students on nutrition and empowers them to make healthy choices. The goal is to promote the health of our community but also to learn about the importance of public health.

Contact: Ria Sood and Amrita Rehal
Faculty Advisor: Geeta Maker-Clark, MD

Partners in Health Engage aims to build the right-to-health movement by recruiting and empowering teams of dedicated student advocates. In pursuit of global health equity, we drive campaigns that generate resources to fund high-quality healthcare for people living in poverty, foster public discourse and education, and advocate for policies that advance the human right to healthcare worldwide. We are an inclusive global health and social justice organization dedicated to using our capacities as organizers, students, and professionals to connect the benefits of modern medical science to those most in need of them.

Contact: Imran Khan
Faculty Advisor: Nicholas G. Ludmer, MD, Emergency Medicine

The mission of Pritzker Sports MedCEEP is to connect Pritzker students with opportunities to
serve local South Side youth sports programs. We will partner with Dr. Abdullah Hasan Pratt’s
Medical Careers Exposure and Emergency Preparedness (MedCEEP) program to:

1. Provide free sports physicals to high school athletes
2. Assist attendings and residents with medical coverage of high school sporting events
3. Teach local coaches and student athletes about relevant health topics, including concussions, heat strokes, asthma attacks, allergic reactions, nutrition, mental health, and more.

Contact: Megan Teramoto and Aakriti Mathur;
Faculty Advisor: Abdullah Pratt, MD, Department of Emergency Medicine 

We are a medical student organization at the Pritzker School of Medicine dedicated to relieving the health disparities of developing countries. We annually plan a service trip to an international and underserved location to provide needed medical services. We also raise money throughout the year to make a generous donation to the non-profit organization with whom we partner. In doing so we experience and witness the health disparities in these countries, understand these issues in order to ultimately become health advocates by educating our community.

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Website: remedyuchicago.org

Contact: Gisely Torres and Andrew Adamek
Faculty Advisor: Brian Callender, MD, and Sonia Oyola, MD, Department of Medicine

The mission of SHARE is to provide adolescents in our community accurate and unbiased information about sexual and reproductive health in order to empower them to make healthy and responsible choices for themselves. Sexual education in the public schools around the University of Chicago currently receives limited attention because of budget and time constraints. Alumna Sarah Kennedy (MD ’18) identified this need as part of her Healthcare Disparities project and in the 2017-2018 school year, she piloted SHARE as a 4-session teaching program at Carter G. Woodson Middle School. She received a lot of positive feedback from the students, the school administrators, and Pritzker volunteers. In light of this success, and in the potential that this program has for fostering relationships between Pritzker and our South Side community, we are seeking to register SHARE as an official Pritzker organization with the hope of creating a sustainable health outreach and service program.

Contact: Nikita Dulin
Faculty Advisor: Anna Volerman Beaser, MD, Department of Medicine & Pediatrics

The South Side Science Scholars group is committed to creating and delivering a sustainable weekly afterschool science program to under-served Chicago grade schools, particularly those of the South Side. We aspire to positively impact children's scientific thinking, elements of health education, communication skills, and enthusiasm for science.

Dulles School Of Excellence (4-Year Program)
Contacts: Kyra McGee
Faculty Advisor: Alejandro Plana MD, Department of Medicine

Sherman School of Excellence (1-Year Program)
Contacts: Olivia Madalone and Rishab  Bhatt
Faculty Advisor: Wendy Darlington MD, Department of Pediatric Hematology & Oncology