Are you concerned about the state of the U.S. public health system? Do you want to work with others to figure out a new way forward?

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect the world, it has demonstrated the importance of a robust public health system, one that is ready to respond in times of crisis as well as supporting the foundations of a healthy society. The 2021 Salk Health Activist Fellowship will focus emerging activists on re-envisioning public health in America to address our current dismal state of health. While COVID-19 has exposed problems in our healthcare infrastructure, it is only one of a multitude of problems that need to be addressed. Now is the opportunity to look across disciplines to create a renewed vision of public health and create lasting change.

During the 9-week program, Fellows will learn from regional and national experts, past public health initiatives, and work in multidisciplinary teams to bring fresh solutions to the challenges facing public health in the U.S. Fellows will gain insights into the existing U.S. public health system, behavioral science principles, and how technology can be incorporated to foment change. Fellows will expand their ideas on health, exploring what health means to U.S. communities, as they work toward outside-the-box solutions that re-envision a new approach to public health. Utilizing the framework of design-thinking, they will synthesize their experiences to propose an innovative idea to a current public health challenge within either a local, statewide, or national context.

The Jewish Healthcare Foundation’s Patient Safety Fellowship will offer a unique curriculum this summer to explore the challenges and opportunities facing senior residential living and senior care. After the disruption of COVID-19, options for elders must embrace creative solutions that help older adults age well and safely in a range of settings. Fellows, working across disciplines, will explore existing and conceptual models for transforming our community and healthcare systems that maximize quality of life for elders and families.

Within teams, fellows will identify core elements to design a new model that enhances current systems to maximize safety and quality, and then they will pitch how the adoption and implementation of their model would address challenges of our current systems.

This Fellowship takes on a key challenge: the reality that professionals are not well prepared to deal with or talk about death, dying, and grieving families, especially during an era of COVID-19. The Fellowship allows participants to learn, confront, and discuss the legal, medical, social, cultural, familial, and spiritual aspects of death and dying within a multi-disciplinary group in a low-pressure environment. The sessions include opportunities to practice conversation skills, facilitated conversations, and virtual site visits.

Ever wonder why the issue that you are passionate about hasn’t grabbed the public’s attention or transformed health care? Do you want to learn how to construct a winning strategy to mobilize action and influence policy?

During the International Year of the Nurse and the Midwife, and as our nation heads toward a critical election, the 2020 Jonas Salk Health Activist Fellowship will focus emerging health activists on critical reproductive health issues that impact the work of nurses and midwives. COVID-19 has disrupted essential women’s health services with changing policies and practices across the nation. Now is the opportunity to advocate for a renewed platform for women’s health and create lasting change.

During the 9-week program (10 sessions), Fellows will interact with some of the region’s foremost leaders in policy, advocacy, and women’s health to learn how to develop compelling platforms, build coalitions, and advocate with elected officials. Fellows will develop new skills around public policy and storytelling in order to develop appealing and effective reform and build public will. During the finale of the Fellowship, Fellows will get the chance to engage with legislators and advocate for a strategy for bills impacting nursing, midwifery, and women's reproductive issues.

The Patient Safety Fellowship is a dynamic educational program of the Jewish Healthcare Foundation, Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative, and Health Careers Futures.

The Fellowship aims to foster the healthcare leaders of tomorrow—leaders who respond to rapid change and discovery, apply an interdisciplinary approach, and strive to continually improve health care and patient safety.

This summer, the Fellowship is focusing on the overall response to COVID-19 in the U.S.. Over the course of the 9-week program, fellows will engage with a variety of expert speakers in the fields of public health, infectious disease, safety science, and emergency preparedness, as well as leaders of healthcare systems and local innovators adapting to the crisis. As the fellows engage with one another and gain insight from the different lens of the pandemic, they will synthesize their lessons and apply them in designing a response to a case study/scenario of a healthcare outbreak or disaster.

The home for the 2019 Salk Health Activist Fellowship.

We are going to use this platform to be able to communicate effectively, collaborate, and build each other up for this fellowship. Activism starts here. Let us learn and use each other's strengths to the best of our ability. 

Together, we can change the world. 

In an attempt to de-stigmatize drug use and promote access to care, an intiative to educate on the benefits of harm reduction methods, with an emphasis on access to syringe exchange programs, will be implemented. Using testimonials, infographics, and other promotional materials, myths and misconceptions of needle exchanges will be debunked. In addition, participants will be encourage to write their representatives to 1. decriminalize syringes, and 2. promote the legalization of needle exchanges statewide for Pennsylvania.

Pregnant women, no matter their socioeconomic status, should have equal rights and access to the best care. We hope to narrow down the potential causes of increased mortality rates and design unique solutions to address gaps in quality and access to care. 

Stigma related to substance use  is considered a main barrier to the early identification, diagnosis and access to treatment. Decreasing stigma related to substance use among healthcare providers can help enhance early access to treatment and improve patients' health outcomes. 

The home for the 2018 Salk Health Activist Fellowship.

We are going to use this platform to be able to communicate effectively, collaborate, and build each other up for this fellowship. Activism starts here. Let us learn and use each other's strengths to the best of our ability. 

Together, we can change the world. 

According to the Healthy People 2020 Midcourse Review (2016), only 21.3% of American adults meet the minimum physical activity (PA) guideline recommendations of 150 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic physical activity per week.  The vision of this action group is to become an advocate for prevention and wellness in health care.  This would involve a cultural shift from a reactive intervention based system to a proactive prevention based system.  This shift would prioritize maintaining an individual's independence and quality of life across the lifespan through minimizing sedentary activities and optimizing physical activity.  

Vitiligo (vit-ih-LIE-go) is a disease that causes the loss of skin color in blotches. The extent and rate of color loss from vitiligo is unpredictable. It can affect the skin on any part of your body. It may also affect hair and the inside of the mouth. The main reason and cause of vitiligo is the fact that the body itself decides to destroy its skin pigment. Without a doubt, this is an irregularity of the system. However, the main culprit for this setback is the immune system. Doctors currently can’t predict whether the Vitiligo on a person will spread, and  how fast. Currently, there is no known cure for Vitiligo, but treatment may be able to make skin tone appear more even. However, treatments can be time consuming and expensive, and often not covered by health insurance.  Because Vitiligo affects a person’s appearance, it is considered as a “cosmetic problem.” However, it is more than a “cosmetic problem.” It is a medical condition. People who have Vitiligo have a higher risk of getting some other medical conditions – such as hearing loss; painful sunburns; develop other autoimmune diseases; changes in vision/eye problems; anxiety and depression. Vitiligo is not contagious, and it is not life threatening. However, it is life-altering. Some people develop low self-esteem. They may no longer want to hang out with friends. They can develop serious depression. Most people have Vitiligo for life, so it’s important to develop coping strategies. Researchers have found that many people who have vitiligo often feel anxious and embarrassed around others. It’s easy to understand why. People often stare and make rude remarks. Some people are obviously frightened. Facing this day in and day out can take a toll on a person’s overall wellbeing. 

Vision: 

- Raise awareness about vitiligo and the dermatological and psychological impact the disease has on those affected by it.

- Partner with healthcare professionals, educational institutions and social workers and activists to work diligently toward securing grant funding and increase sponsors and donors.

- Encourage governmental agencies to make vitiligo research and advocacy efforts a high priority.

- Improve the care of patients with vitiligo by providing medical professionals with the best available information about vitiligo and its treatment.

- Improve teacher and staff training in schools so they are prepared to provide support to parents and students cope with this disease. 

About Addiction is committed to challenging harmful stereotypes surrounding addiction and recovery. In today's world, "the addict" is often depicted as someone who is lazy, weak-willed, and even dangerous to our communities. Individuals battling substance use disorders are consistently portrayed in this inaccurate and unfair light, leaving many stranded in a world of overwhelming stigma and cyclic abuse. 

The reality of addiction is that it knows no boundaries. Addiction affects people from all walks of life, regardless of race, gender, or socioeconomic status. Addiction is not a lack of moral judgment, nor is it a lack of willpower. Addiction is a mental illness, a heavily-researched disruption of the body's normal physiological processes.

We, as a nation, are currently facing an epidemic of prescription drug misuse, abuse, and addiction. The number of Americans battling substance use disorders is growing exponentially, with over 100 lives lost to drug overdoses every single day. 

Thankfully, we are beginning to see increased recognition and concern for this problem. Across the nation, communities are mobilizing to create new resources for treatment and recovery. But all of these efforts can only do so much good if we continue to allow harsh and inaccurate stereotypes to propogate. It is paramount that while we continue to build these resources, we simultaneously shift public opinion about addiction away from judgment and discomfort and toward understanding, support, and acceptance. 

About Addiction believes that we must create a world where individuals with substance use disorders are first recognized for who they truly are: human beings, each unique and valuable, who have fallen on difficult times. We must make a conscious effort to learn and to understand the process of this disease and how we can help those affected. We must support our neighbors in their recovery, both short- and long-term, and empower them to re-build their lives and pursue healthy, successful futures. Re-shaping perspectives of addiction is truly the first step on the road to recovery.  

"On Drugs" is a podcast where people will talk about everything related to drugs. Their experience with drugs, addiction, treatment, benefits, harms, research, drug policy, and anything else we can think of it in the future.

The goal of this podcast is to de-stigmatize this topic, to expose those who know nothing about the topic, and to put a human face and human voice to the stories we all hear about drugs.

Before we can tackle the question of what our relationship with drugs should be, we need to bring it out of the shadows, to see it for what it is, and to talk about it, openly and honestly.

The vision of this group is to realize the implementation of medical marijuana as a viable therapeutic option. Although legislation has enacted its use in Pennsylvania for a select number of disease states, a number of barriers to implementation exist before comprehensive medical marijuana therapy can become a reality.

This action group hopes to learn from local leaders in medical marijuana policy reform, anticipate these barriers to impelementation, and combine resources to address the root causes that might affect the greatest downstream change. 

Last, this action group hopes to investigate research showing the influence of comprehensive marijuana policy on opioid abuse and overdose in pilot states across the country. Synthesis and analysis of this research may illuminate the role of medical marijuana as an alternative to opiate therapy in the management of long term pain. We hope to investigate this with both precision and urgency and present our findings to experts in pain management.

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), stressful or traumatic events that a child experiences while growing up, are proven risk factors for future developmental, behavioral, and emotional distubances. For example, ACEs can impact an indiviual's lifespan, sustance abuse, high-risk sexual behavior, pregancy outcomes, and depression levels. Considering the drastic impact ACEs can have on a child's future, we believe it is imperative to increase protective factors against them and investigate how to mitigate their effects. These effort are driven by the goal of impairing the  tragectory of negative outcomes ACEs induce in order to promote a safer future for children disadvantaged at a young age. 

Health literacy is the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions. Young adults are among the most affected by low rates of health literacy. Increased health literacy can lead to fewer chronic health condtions, better lifestyle choices, and a more complete understanding of one's medical rights. My vision is one where people understand their health insurance and how to navigate it. And based on this understanding of their health insurance, they maintain a healthier lifestyle. It's a vision of a world where people understand their doctor or nurse when speaking to them and do not leave the hospital or office completely confused.