Oct. 9 Forum Will Highlight Community Outreach By Stanford Med Students

From AIDS activism in Africa to the mental health of high school students in San Jose, the Stanford University School of Medicine will showcase a variety of community outreach work by students over the past year at the annual Fall Forum on Community Health and Public Service on Oct. 9.

“This is a great opportunity to learn about some of the amazing work students are doing around Stanford and internationally,” said medical student Sarah Juul, co-coordinator of the event. “It’s amazing how many cool things are going on.”

The free event is open to the public and will feature work on several service and partnership projects by Stanford medical students, undergraduates and physician-assistant students in underserved communities, both at home and around the world. The event begins at 5 p.m. in the university’s Arrillaga Alumni Center.

Coordinated by medical students, the forum is sponsored by the medical school’s Office of Community Health. The 2-year-old community health office recently hired a new executive director in an ongoing effort to bolster exactly this type of student presence in the community, said program director Ann Banchoff.

“My goal is to continue to increase Stanford students’ exposure to community health,” said Rhonda McClinton-Brown, the new executive director who starts the position on Nov. 1. For the past 10 years, she has been executive director of the Community Health Partnership of Santa Clara County, a nonprofit that works with community health centers to expand access to health services for the medically underserved. “I’m proud of the commitment Stanford has made to community health.”

Presentations at the forum will range from a discussion of students’ work fighting the AIDS virus in South Africa to spearheading a hepatitis prevention campaign within the Asian community locally.

“I think at Stanford there is a lot of encouragement of basic science research,” Juul said. “The forum is a place where students doing community-based research can get some of this same recognition.”

The presentations will conclude with keynote speaker Mimi Doohan, MD. A medical school alumna, Doohan is co-founder of Doctors Without Walls, a Santa Barbara nonprofit dedicated to providing volunteer medical care to the homeless.

Stanford University Medical Center integrates research, medical education and patient care at its three institutions — Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford. For more information, please visit the Web site of the medical center’s Office of Communication & Public Affairs at http://mednews.stanford.edu.