Medical Students Awarded Remillard Family Community Fund Grants

WORCESTER — Population-based Urban and Rural Community Health (PURCH) students Hye In Sarah Lee, MD/PhD student, and Pooja Dutta, MD student, were among the recipients of grants from the Remillard Family Community Service Fund for projects aiming to improve local health.

The fund’s 2022 funding cycle supports 10 community-outreach projects proposed and led by faculty, residents, or students at UMass Chan Medical School.

“Food for Thought: A Nutrition Outreach Program for Individuals with Serious Mental Illness” — a project by Lee and Dutta along with medical students Lauren Shumate, Kai-Lou Yue, and Marko Stojcevski; psychiatry resident  Dr. Yumi Kovic; and Dr. Xiaoduo Fan, professor of Psychiatry — will provide food, recipes, and cooking supplies at community locations to help patients with severe mental illness improve their diets. It will also pilot several community vegetable gardens.

“Creating a Longitudinal Case Management Program Within the Worcester Free Care Collaborative” — a project by Lee along with medical students Nikita Joshi and Madeline Schwartz and Dr. James Ledwith, assistant professor of Family Medicine and Community Health — will expand and improve case-management operations to be more comprehensive and ongoing and better-connected to other social-service organizations in Worcester.