Meet our Faith and Health Grant Cohort Leaders

University of the Incarnate Word – Associate Professor

Campus-Community Engagement Cohort

As a spouse of an active-duty service member, I know that the CALL TO SERVICE can come at any time. …I strive to collaborate with other campuses, organizations, and communities to share the same values of promoting a more inclusive environment for people of many different faiths, cultures, and backgrounds. This was a great opportunity for me to learn how to bridge interprofessional and interfaith efforts in our academic and community work. The world around us is changing rapidly, with new and complex issues facing communities everywhere. I am excited to build a cohort of like-minded individuals who are passionate about interfaith campus-community engagement. I am hoping we can develop a strong foundation of collaboration to engage in intercampus activities in the future to have a greater impact.

We also have opportunities for communities and students to meet others via the use of the internet. As devastating pandemic is, the use of technology was embraced, and the world became closer. We need to help each other through this difficult time and be there for each other. We are all part of one community. I believe that this is an important time when we need to come together as human beings regardless of our background or religion. I am hoping that my cohort will be a place where we can come together to talk about what it means to be engaged in our communities, and how to use our faith as a way of being engaged.

The diversity of talent and the wealth of experience in this group is amazing. We are finding many connections between our work, which leads to many interesting conversations about what we are doing, how it relates to other fields, and how we might collaborate in the future. The willingness to help each other, strong support of each other’s learning and growth, and contribution to informative discussions are unprecedented. I am looking forward to our future meetings and collaborations.

Loyola University Maryland, Director of Pre-Health Programs

Health Equity Cohort

I see leadership as a form of service. I wanted to make myself available to serve my colleagues around the country. I believe that volunteering to serve is a great way to learn more deeply. Our cohort focuses on the pressing topic of health inequalities and need to create health equity that allows all Americans to live in a society that fosters safe communities and creates access to social, medical, and educational resources.

Our cohort explores ways to reduce health disparities through faith-based initiatives. It has been amazing to hear of surprising parallels in each other’s work. For instance, we have two leaders of physician assistant programs who learned of each other’s work in our cohort meeting. I work with Baltimore churches in their work with health, and I was positively surprised to learn that one of our cohort members, who is not from Baltimore, has interest to partner with churches in Baltimore. These types of connections are great to learn about.

Furman University – Professor of Religion

Competencies for Pre-health Cohort

I have a real passion about the importance of the relationship between faith, medicine, and health. I have been working on this concept for a decade and see it as central not only to the lives of people of faith but also for the work of health care providers and the very survival of religious studies programs.

The first goal is a list of things that pre-health career undergraduates should know about religion and its relationship to issues in medicine and views of health. A second goal would be taking that list of competencies and developing a model syllabus with reading suggestions. The variety, intelligence, experience, collegiality, and enthusiasm of the group is inspiring.