Here’s what life in Lakeview Hall looks like for sophomore Taylor Pak: “We fold each other’s laundry. My suite mate and I engage in heated health care debates while we brush our teeth. As a group, we’re unstoppable.”
Their resident assistant, Jencie Hawthorne (above left, with Pak), knows exactly how they feel. They’re all part of Richmond’s Global Health, Medical Humanities, and Human Rights SSIR course. Through the SSIR program, students study and live together, offering plenty of time for foaming toothpaste-in-the-mouth debates.
Hawthorne, a junior, stayed with the program as its resident assistant this year after taking Global Health last year and serving with Commonwealth Covered, helping enroll Virginians for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. She continues to volunteer, spending this year at CrossOver Healthcare Ministry, which offers free health care to those without health insurance. As a scribe, she’s constantly one-on-one with both doctors and patients.
“The scribe work allows me to do more than just shadow the physician, but also be able to work closely with the physician and patient in order to have a vital role in the patient’s visit with CrossOver,” she said. “This connection with CrossOver has allowed me to experience Richmond through a new perspective and become more connected with downtown Richmond.”
Global Health students travel everywhere from the Dominican Republic to Grundy, Va., but the true heart of this program is what these students do right here, right now, in Richmond.
“People come in and say ‘I want to go to Africa and save people,’” said Rick Mayes, the course’s lead professor. “Cool. But you know, you don’t have to go that far. There’s so much stuff in our own state and in our own town. You can do a lot of great work and help a lot of people two miles away from campus.”
Pak is training to help the campus community as a volunteer with UREMS, the campus emergency response squad. She’s shadowing Richmond-area rescue squads but will soon be coming to the rescue on campus.
“The ride-alongs have been an especially powerful experience,” she said. “You get to see the health care system from the perspective of the patient. We enter the patients’ homes; we see their families, their support systems.
“It’s easy to criticize and point fingers at emergency medicine because of its high health care spending and those who abuse the system. But after seeing patients when they’re so vulnerable and in so much pain, after understanding where they came from, all you want to do is help, and as an EMT, I feel like I really can.”
These serving hearts sometimes bud into late-night debates with classmates who are also suite mates; that’s the beauty of this SSIR program. Students help the community while building one of their own.
“You can feel the passion and excitement when sitting in one of our classes,” Pak said. “Together, I know we can change the world.”
