Health Voices
"Health Voices" is the official bi-monthly podcast of the Public Health Coalition at Yale (an undergraduate organization). We bring forward the leading voices in health innovation and entrepreneurship, providing a platform for those addressing the leading public health challenges of our day.
Health Voices, launched in the 2023-2024 school year, began with conversations featuring Yale public health experts and now seeks to connect with a diverse global audience. In its second season, the platform showcases inspiring stories and actionable insights from students, CEOs, advocates, doctors, authors, and more, spanning Yale, New Haven, and beyond. Dedicated to breaking barriers in health literacy, Health Voices fosters understanding, empowers listeners, and highlights innovative solutions to critical health issues worldwide.
Whether you are part of the Yale and New Haven community or simply passionate about health and innovation, this is a space for you. Join us as we not only learn, share, and explore how others are contributing to solutions for a healthier world, but also how you can too.
Health Voices
Nothing About Us Without Us: The Power of NHP's Community Health Partnerships
Ryan Sutherland, Community Outreach Director of the Neighborhood Health Project (NHP), shares how his journey—from aspiring ethnomusicologist to public health advocate—shaped his passion for community-centered care. Since 2003, NHP has redefined healthcare access by offering free diabetes and hypertension screenings every Saturday at Loaves and Fishes food pantry in New Haven.
In this episode, Ryan explains how meeting patients where they are not only improves health outcomes but also rebuilds trust in a system that has often failed them. We dive into NHP’s unique model, where students across health disciplines provide compassionate care alongside partners offering everything from emergency contraception to mental health services.
We also explore how NHP’s philosophy—"nothing about us without us"—reshapes medical education by teaching future providers to view health equity as both a clinical and social justice imperative. Ryan’s story reminds us that global health starts in our own neighborhoods, and that real change begins by listening.
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We encourage different folks who might be unfamiliar with Yale to get involved with what Yale has to offer as far as health care services. And then, in addition to those people who may have had possibly negative experiences at Yale, we give them another opportunity to see different students and different clinicians who are Yale affiliated and voice their concerns, but also give us, as future clinicians, an opportunity to correct those wrongs right. So if patients come up to us and they say, gosh, I had a really negative experience at the emergency room the other day and here's what went wrong, what we always ask them is how can we, as future physicians and future PAs and nursing professionals and public health professionals, how can we make that experience better for you? And that whole interaction with patients gives a lot to us, allows those patients to be seen, heard and respected in ways that hopefully heal old wounds and allow them to feel like we are working, hopefully working towards eliminating disparities in health care.
Speaker 2:Ryan Sutherland is the Community Outreach Director of the Neighborhood Health Project, a community organization dedicated to providing free preventative health services to the New Haven community. The organization serves as a bridge between medical resources and underserved populations, advocating for health equity while empowering residents to take control of their own health through compassionate, community-centered care. In this episode, we explore the origins of the Neighborhood Health Project, the vital role medical students play in advancing community health and the transformative impact of accessible, community-centered health services. Ryan Sutherland, what have you spent the last two years doing as a student at the School of Medicine?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So first of all, Farid, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. The last couple of years have been pretty busy. I have been working pretty hard in the community as the executive director of the New Haven PAWS project Poverty Alleviation through Unity, sustainability and Empowerment and also as the Community Outreach Director for Neighborhood Health Project, which I've been with for the last, I think, five years. So I'm super excited to talk to you a little bit more about both of those organizations today, both of which do local community outreach for the homeless in New Haven and those who are undocumented and uninsured.
Speaker 1:Additionally, I've done a little bit of work with the American Medical Student Association. We have been I worked together with another medical student as the co-president of that organization last year, as well as the immediate past president of the Urology Interest Group, as a Solomon Fellow at the Yale Law School, committed to promoting health equity and research and connecting the sort of legal and medical parallels, and also on the student advisory board for the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking. So I do a little bit of work in entrepreneurship, a little bit of work in global clinical medicine, and it really, I think, has been a wonderful experience. Coming back to Yale where I originally did my master's in public health to sort of tie up a lot of the loose ends that I had left undone during COVID. So it's been a really great pleasure to come back and be part of the MD class of 2026 now.
Speaker 2:For those listening and wondering whether they should tune into this episode. Can you explain why should they?
Speaker 1:to this episode? Can you explain why should they? Yeah, so I mean I love to talk about public health. I encourage anyone at Yale to get involved in the community broadly and I think today's conversation is really going to go over some great organizations that I hope people, if they have not been familiar with them, are familiarized to them today through the interview and also, hopefully, they can get in touch with us if they have any connections that they think could benefit organizations or even apply to volunteer with us. We're happy to advertise those positions for volunteers across Yale's community and in the broader greater New Haven area. So I think that you know people listening in hopefully will find this very interesting, both about my personal journey in public health but also about the wonderful resources that we have in New Haven that are geared towards helping those who are impoverished, those experiencing homelessness and those who are undocumented or underinsured.
Speaker 2:And I guess we can start with you trying to describe the Neighborhood Health Project. If you could describe the mission of it in a couple sentences, how would you describe it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I've been with Neighborhood Health Project since 2018. I did my master's in public health at Yale from 2018 to 2020. And the group has been around far before that. In fact. We were founded in 2003. It came out of the School of Medicine as an organization that primarily served as a screening clinic for those experiencing homelessness at 57 Olive, which is Loaves and Fish's site where they do their food pantry, which is the largest food pantry in New Haven. In New Haven, we have been there and have been a trusted partner since 2003 and do mostly screening for diabetes and for hypertension for people who may find it difficult to come to clinical appointments.
Speaker 1:These are individuals who have been historically marginalized, who may find clinical experience terrifying, frankly, and these are people who, unfortunately, have largely been neglected by healthcare systems in the past or have faced discrimination at the hands of healthcare providers, and so what we have tried to do with our model is really try and adopt a sort of street medicine style of outreach, where we meet people where they are, sort of street medicine style of outreach where we meet people where they are.
Speaker 1:Our whole goal is, if we can meet them where they're at, both at the food pantry or on the street. We'll be able to sort of have those conversations with people and encourage trust and follow up with healthcare providers in ways that hopefully will manifest in them getting a primary care provider, which you know we've seen many times. I'm so proud of the work that we've done to connect patients with secondary care providers and get them connected to care, especially when they're recently arrived and may not have a great grasp of the US healthcare system or, as I mentioned before, face discrimination or have fears around the healthcare system that we can help to eliminate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when you say you meet them where they're at, what does that mean? Because I feel like a lot of people want to understand the importance of doing that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. So what I mean by meeting patients where they're at is really sort of going into the community, branching out from beyond the sort of Yale bubble and meeting patients outside of sort of traditional, quote unquote clinical spaces. It can be very difficult for patients to even cross the threshold at the hospital. The fear that many of them have about billing, the fears that many of them have that they might be discriminated against if they're LGBT or if they are undocumented or if they are homeless.
Speaker 1:What we try to do is meet patients where they're seeking care. That's not clinical, ie at Loaves and Fishes, where they're already at seeking good, nutritious food options, and we sort of integrate into that model where people come for food and they leave with health care advice so they don't feel overburdened by having to take an additional Uber ride or trying to coordinate transportation to a hospital facility. We're actually right there to catch them if they have any questions and we've been a reliable partner, as I said, since 2003. We only take about two months off a year. We are there every Saturday at 57 Olive between 8.30 to 11.30 in the morning, sometimes a little bit later depending on patient load, and we really try our best to ensure that patients feel seen, heard and respected. What exactly?
Speaker 2:are the services that you do provide with NHPA.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I think that's one of the great things about my role, so my role as community outreach director. I get so excited talking about my role because it is incredibly dynamic, um. So we really never have the same sort of guests come to clinic Um every year. We um add to our list of uh different organizations that come and provide services.
Speaker 1:So at the core we do provide both glucose screenings so we do finger prick glucose monitoring in addition to regular hypertension screenings for high blood pressure. We give patients this information, we record it for them if they're interested in that over time, and we also try and refer patients at baseline to behavioral health, mental health, physical health, sort of appointments and opportunities in New Haven that are low barrier to access. So these are places like Cornell Scott, fairhaven Health, you know, different organizations where patients don't feel as burdened perhaps as going to an appointment at Yale New Haven Health, although we do refer to different organizations and different providers at New Haven Health as well. We just try and provide a little bit more of a warm handoff in those situations. As far as my role, what's exciting about the sort of beyond the baseline services that we offer?
Speaker 1:We do offer sort of seasonal offerings. So we've partnered in the past with Macy's, providing over three or 400 coats to individuals during the winter holiday. We've partnered with Loaves and Fits, with Bombas, which is an organization that provides us regular socks. We have partnered in the past with Connecticut League of Women's Voters to try and encourage patients to share their testimonies about recent sort of Husky coverage and how voting might impact them if they are eligible to vote to receive health care services.
Speaker 1:We've partnered with Gather, which is an organization that has allowed patients to be directly involved in growing their own food in a farm-to-table methodology. Involved in growing their own food in a farm-to-table methodology. This year we've partnered with the Soap Donation Center to provide donations of soap to clients. We've also partnered with organizations like the Connecticut Diaper Bank to provide patients with diapers and we provide a range of services both from donations and from patient advocacy organizations that physically table on site with us. So these are, you know, for smoking cessation, for emergency contraception, for Narcan, and we have built over the past 20 years such a wonderful network of trusted partners in the community and I can, you know, sit here right now and call up some of them and they'll be in there this Saturday if I need them because they recognize the work that we do and how wonderful it is and how needed it is, especially in the current climate of healthcare services in New Haven.
Speaker 2:And you kind of talk about these partnerships as like very important collaboration with people that do our services at NHP. Would you then describe NHP as like a one-stop place for you to get health information and health services that are very brand new in their nature?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so definitely wouldn't describe it as a one-stop shop, and we're pretty open about that with patients too. We are very careful to sort of provide our boundaries and what we can do and what we cannot do. We do tell all patients that we are sort of a first-line screening clinic, so we are not comprehensive. We do not provide that, you know, beyond the sort of initial vaccines, which is a program that I'll tell you a little bit more about in just a moment. But we don't necessarily provide you necessarily provide comprehensive services.
Speaker 1:What we do do through our partnerships, which is our strength, is connect patients with warm handoffs to different service providers.
Speaker 1:And we have, for example, patients who come in who are critically sick and through some of our programs we're able to connect them with the patient navigator program at Yale to help them through the emergency department and admissions process.
Speaker 1:We're able to connect some patients who require surgery or advanced care through project access and getting them connected with specialist providers. So we shift the burden of sort of comprehensiveness to our trusted partners. We shift the burden of sort of comprehensiveness to our trusted partners and I think that's really what makes Neighborhood Health Project such a wonderful service in the community, because we don't claim to be anything more than we are. We are a screening clinic and the providers that are at our clinic are all students who are enrolled in the health professional schools. So these are school of public health, school of nursing, PA program and medical school, and we have a licensed clinical provider, whether it's a nurse practitioner or a physician, as someone who is able to sort of oversee all the medical advice that we give during our course of clinic and that advice then trickles down to help those patients make informed medical decisions about pursuing next steps. And we accompany patients all the time towards meeting their health goals, whatever those goals might be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that sounds like a very intentional work that you do and making sure that they're supported in various amount of ways. These partnerships really do showcase that, I think. Now I kind of want to like discuss you as a person and like the timeline of your academic career leading up to the Neighborhood Health Project. How did your academic career kind of shape your opinions and beliefs around healthcare?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, you know, I guess this is sort of a broader question too because, um, you know, obviously part of this podcast which is why I'm so excited to be on here is to sort of encourage different students who are, um, you know, at the earlier starts of their careers, to pursue a career like mine. And I would encourage, you know, anyone to. You know, keep your eyes open, keep your heart open. Um, you know, when the universe kind of gives you a thread, really follow it and see where it goes. Because my personal career has been anything but linear.
Speaker 1:I originally started as a biology and music major at Emory many years ago and was originally planning to go into a career as an ethnomusicologist, so someone who studies kind of sociological musics. I really appreciated that line of my career and while I was sort of doing that sort of global discovery, I really found some very interesting new passions. That kind of led me to healthcare and one of the greatest experiences that I had as an undergrad was being able to study abroad. And being able to study abroad allowed me to really expand my worldview in a positive way. After I graduated I ended up continuing that process of studying abroad and did a Fulbright in Madrid in Spain and then worked for a year at US Agency for International Development and the United Nations Development Program in Jakarta and Indonesia. So I had a lot of really diverse sort of global perspectives and at that time I thought that I wanted to be a full-time public health foreign service officer. So I got my master's in public health and from there I met such wonderful professors who were medical doctors in addition to being epidemiologists, which I didn't know at the time was a thing. I thought they were very distinct fields and didn't think that they had very much overlap.
Speaker 1:And you know, as a first generation student, both of my parents do have their I'll say quasi first generation. Both of my parents do have their bachelors, but my mother graduated in her fifties and my dad was in his forties when he graduated, so we really didn't have a lot, when I was growing up, of guidance towards medicine. I didn't know much about what that took to be a physician. And when I met with a lot of these people who were my research mentors and life mentors, I think it was one day when one of them said Ryan, like all of the work that you're doing is clinical, why are you not interested in medicine. I said, well, I am, but I don't. I didn't realize that this was something that I could do as a physician, and so that began my sort of direction towards medicine. That led me to working for Partners in Health in Boston for a year while I took the MCAT and applied to medical school. And I ended up delaying for a year because I received a Rotary Global Grant Foundation scholarship to pursue a master's in development studies at Cambridge and after I finished that I was ready to start medical school. And here I am today.
Speaker 1:So I think, just to sort of summarize that journey, there isn't a linear path. It has been shaped and sort of formed by my interactions with different mentors and friends and colleagues. And I just say to all of the students listening to this podcast that you know, life really throws some surprises at you. Just go with it.
Speaker 1:I think if I wasn't ready to sort of catch the curveballs that it did throw, I wouldn't be in the career that I am right now and I am so happy to be. I wouldn't be in the career that I am right now and I am so happy to be pursuing a career in medicine, particularly now and you know we can sort of talk a little bit about politics. But one of the organizations obviously has been gutted by the current administration USA Agency for International Development, which is critical for soft diplomacy and soft policy. And there's no other career, in my personal opinion, that allows you to best shape health policy than being a physician. We are trusted advocates for our patients every day and that to me is the most rewarding thing about this career and has really cemented my desire in pursuing it. So hopefully that was helpful and kind of a serpentine route suing it.
Speaker 2:So hopefully that was helpful and kind of a serpentine route, yeah yeah, Like from like ethnomusicography to community work and international and coming back here to really delve into the clinical side of things. I think that's like a very you're right, very like non-linear way of looking at your career. In that sense, I feel like when we talk about community work, I feel like most people are not drawn to it. There's not a lot of people that are really passionate about community work. What was that moment for you when you were like this is something that I want to do for my career?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, I think it was a combination of different things. I mean, I've always been pretty interested in sort of community health advocacy, pretty interested in sort of community health advocacy and that's sort of like boots on the ground, grassroots advocacy um connections with my different networks, has really encouraged me to see the power of community connections. Um, for example, when I was a master's in public health student, I did a lot of work with a group called sex workers and allies network, um Swan uh, which was run at the time by Beatrice Codiani and myself, and Beatrice actually served on the community leadership board for the city of New Haven to try and encourage them to not criminalize sex workers, people with mental health conditions and people with people who use drugs and, instead of sort of doing that sort of criminal legal process, divert them through a program called LEAD Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion to resources that could help them improve their mental health, stay off the streets and give them connections to health care services that they so desperately needed. And she really empowered me and still to this day we're good friends. Her story is one of extremely selfless grassroots advocacy in New Haven that has built such a wonderful harm reduction organization that continues to do such great work in New Haven and so, for me, kind of recognizing how powerful those community connections were inspired me, as a future provider, to do the same with different organizations.
Speaker 1:So now a lot of the work that we do with Neighborhood Health Project and with the New Haven POS Project is really around inviting community stakeholders into our conversations.
Speaker 1:Everything that we have, if you come to visit the clinic, as far as resources, has been suggested by our patients, so everything from diapers to Narcan to emergency contraception, to condoms, to collaborations with Gather or other organizations, these have all been based on community need.
Speaker 1:And I think as a provider, especially as a medical doctor who's interested in advocacy, you have to really listen to the community and what its needs and wants are before you sort of impose your sort of agenda or objectives. And in fact I think community-based public health research CBPR is really kind of, in my opinion, the only way that public health should be done. Um, just because you know, without sort of community rooted uh guidance, I just don't think that community um public health initiatives have a chance of of lasting. Um, I am a huge fan of that. Um. You know, tenant, that you know nothing about us without us um the sort of aspect of you know, not uh doing anything that would, um, you know, harm the community, um uh, in the sense of not doing anything at all until the community is sort of involved in those decisions, um which I think is critical to um repairing and building uh good relationships with the community.
Speaker 2:So yeah, when, like when you say I get nothing without like, um, can you please repeat that Nothing about us without us. Yeah, when you say nothing without us, can you please repeat?
Speaker 1:that Nothing about us without us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, nothing about us without us, that concept of community-participated research or community-participated efforts to care for public health. If you don't have their input and their influence and their understanding of certain issues in public health, a lot of things are not going to be done correctly and they're just wasting time in creating effective and really rational public health efforts. What brought you back to like NHP? Like specifically, was it more like a friend told you about it? Was it like you just learned about it on the fly? Like, how did that?
Speaker 1:work, yeah, yeah. So I mean, you know Yale has such wonderful resources. I I encourage everyone listening to the podcast, as students, to really explore the different resources that allow you to get involved in community work that are, you know, obviously Yale affiliated, but do allow you to give back and benefit the community in some way. I found out about NHP like a lot of other public health students did. They had sent out an email about different leadership positions, and I originally started as the budget coordinator for NHP in 2018, I believe I loved my experience so much that when I came back, I had a colleague who was still in medical school and he reached out to me when I started medical school and said you know, Ryan, it's been two years, I'm still here.
Speaker 1:You've come back. Um, would you be interested in a new position, which is sort of community outreach? And I think this position, especially for me, has been the best use of my um skills and abilities because I've been here in new Haven since 2018. I love the community that is here. I intend to do residency at Yale and stick around for a little bit longer. So you know, a lot of the partnerships that we make are people that I consider to be close friends and fellow neighbors in New Haven, so it's been a real pleasure coming back as a medical student and rejoining this wonderful organization.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I feel like NHP's role as a community health clinic and people in NHP as community health workers I think is very, very important. But what would you say is the role of these clinics and workers in addressing disparities in communities? What's the importance of community health workers and bridging the gap between patients and doctors and inserting trust back into communities?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So you know, obviously we are an affiliate of Yale and one thing that I think is great diplomacy as far as our clinic is concerned is that we do not distance ourselves from the university at all. We 100% tell patients that we are Yale's neighborhood health project. We encourage different folks who might be unfamiliar with Yale to get involved with what Yale has to offer as far as healthcare services. And then, in addition to those people who may have had, you know, possibly negative experiences at Yale, we give them another opportunity to see different students and different clinicians who are Yale affiliated and voice their concerns, but also give us, as future clinicians, an opportunity to correct those wrongs, right? So if patients come up to us and they say, gosh, I had a really negative experience at the emergency room the other day and here's what went wrong what we always ask them is how can we, as future physicians and future PAs and nursing professionals and public health professionals, how can we make that experience better for you? And that whole interaction with patients gives a lot to us and it provides a lot of meaning to the work that I do for the clinic, but it also allows those patients to be seen, heard and respected in ways that hopefully heal old wounds and allow them to feel like we are working, hopefully working towards eliminating disparities in healthcare. And so I think there's a lot to be said about what NHP does for the community. I would hesitate to say that we're like a safety net clinic because we are not comprehensive, but I do think that because of the work that we do, you know we routinely see anywhere between 30 and 60 patients every Saturday.
Speaker 1:I think I mentioned earlier that I was going to talk about vaccines but I can probably sneak it in here but we do offer critical vaccinations, over several hundred of them every year, for COVID formerly and now for flu.
Speaker 1:I don't think we normally do the COVID vaccines anymore just because of the agreements with the Department of Public Health, but we still do offer regular vaccines every year for the influenza virus and we offer patients.
Speaker 1:You know I hesitate to sort of put a number on this, but we did think about, you know, years ago, how much the value of the shoes that we received from Souls for Souls and the coats that we received from Macy's, and it was well above $100,000 from that donation alone, and that was several years ago that they had given those items that we looked into and they were all new. All sort of mint, condition, pristine, and thinking about how much we've done in the last couple of years, seeing that we've given out similar amounts of items, I think you know our impact in the community although it's hard to put a number on is clearly in that range. So we're very, very happy with the work that we do. Our patients seem to be very happy with the work that we do as well, and we are constantly searching for ways to improve through patient suggestions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and also I feel like it'll be important to kind of lay out the need for an orange like NHP. Can you put like a picture of the primary healthcare landscape locally and nationally and like why is healthcare only about I treat you when you're sick? And I feel like that's like a very like a dominant mindset in healthcare, and how does like NHB try to like break through that?
Speaker 1:school and medical career, because I viewed public health as kind of the, you know, the opportunity to sort of correct harms before they became significant. And still, you know, that's obviously what public health does. As an aside, though, public health, I think, has been underfunded for many years, because, you know, sort of hypothetical deaths are a little bit less exciting, you know, than than actually saving a patient physically Right. As a medical doctor, you can sew someone up and stop them from bleeding. As a public health professional, you can make steps to address a future pandemic or a future epidemic that could wipe out thousands of people without ever being sort of appreciated, because those people are still living to tell the tale. So it is a really interesting sort of thought process about what we do as medical doctors and what public health professionals do, and I think there was always kind of this idea that you know, medical and public health might have been a little bit more at least in my mind, might have been a little bit more separated than they are, but we both rely heavily on each other in addressing sort of pandemics, pandemic response policies and, of course, patient care, and so I think you know, as kind of a long-winded answer, you know what we do at Neighborhood Health Project is really encourage patients to get screened. We talk to them about sort of early diagnosis. So if someone has, you know, a blood pressure that is elevated, we talk to them about the risks of long-term exposure to hypertension. If they do have an elevated glucose, we talk to them about the reasons that we want them to get on medication for that or at least get checked by an endocrinologist, and in that way we try and save them from the future issues that are obviously going to come from long-term exposure to comorbidities. And a lot of the work that we do at Neighborhood Health Projects is really trying to get patients who especially patients who are recently arrived and homeless and really unconnected to care, to really get seen by a primary care provider so that they can at least feel comfortable that their health care is being monitored.
Speaker 1:We do monitor our patients every week. We have patients who've come back. For some of them, their healthcare is being monitored, um, we do monitor our patients every week. Um, we have patients who've come back for some of them have come back for years um, every week, and we keep a good record of of their numbers over time and, uh, we try and give that information to them so that they can be good stewards of their health in a preventative way. Um so I I hope that answers that question.
Speaker 1:But I think our goal really is to try and encourage patients to realize that, you know, a stitch in time saves nine, right, like, if you are able to sort of address a problem that is a minor problem early, it saves it from becoming a health catastrophe later. And we hope that patients develop the comfort to ask us questions that might be uncomfortable or embarrassing. You know we had one woman come to us and ask about, you know, different sort of contraception options. You know, in addition to you know, different ways in which she could, you know, prevent herself from, um you know, having sort of advanced disease If, if you know, I think she had asked some questions about getting a pap smear and those sort of preventative um questions, you know, are really the bread and butter of both public health and medicine. Because, you know, I I think, um you know, in public health, the best um the best outcome is is is no outcome right, like, we, we really, we really want to make sure these patients are um safe and and and don't have disease in the future.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that is like what makes community health work so important that they're trying to make sure that you don't have to go to the hospital in the first place, that you're just there to make sure that you're okay and make sure that you don't have to go to the hospital in the first place, that you're just there to make sure that you're okay and make sure that you don't. Because I feel like a lot of what happens is that a lot of medical doctors kind of feed off the idea of we only treat you when you get sick for financial reasons. But the real goal of medicine is to really make sure that you're healthy and good in the first place, not only to pad your paycheck or whatever. That's just like I don't need to pad your paycheck or whatever. That's just like I don't know. That's like a really big issue that NHP is addressing in your own way. Now, looking at NHP more specifically who's involved with NHP? Who runs it? Who are the co-directors? What role does the medical advisors have?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, that's an excellent question. We do, you know, obviously keep that information up to date on our website, which is nhpsitesyaleedu. Nam, who's a PhD trained nurse who does a lot of wonderful research in healthcare, outcomes research and also, obviously, practices as a nurse as well. As far as our different student directors are concerned, we have Carlos Hernandez Castillo, who's our resources and referrals director. He's a school of medicine student. Ezra Otto, who's an advanced nursing practitioner student. Ezra Otto, who's an advanced nursing practitioner student, who is our special projects coordinator. Sebastian Salazar, who's our volunteer training and standards director, a YSPH student myself, who's community outreach director. Christina Panzer, who's a school of nursing excuse me advanced practice provider, interested in mental health outreach. She does the flu clinic and the ysn liaison.
Speaker 1:And then we have, um, our sort of data management director, uh, ali webster, who's at the school of public health, and finally, stacy uchendu, who's our volunteer and attendings director, who's also the school of medicine. So we do have six directors. Um, that will be changing soon. We have a couple of people who are leaving to start their careers. We are so proud of the work that they've done. We could, as I said, you know my role is community outreach. I could not for sure, do what we do at a clinic by myself, so it's great to have a community like that, from all different schools and all different backgrounds, to help with managing the clinic, especially on weeks that get quite busy. So yeah, so that's. That's what we've got.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you mentioned a lot of like different individuals that were like involved in different schools, with Yale School of Medicine, school of Health. How does that contribute to NHP success and what's the importance of having future health professionals being involved with community health work?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know it's so funny, farid, that you say that, because I think, you know, for me I definitely felt like it was something that I had been really proud of when I left Yale, and so it was a real no-brainer when I got back and was asked to rejoin the board, because, you know, this has been one of the best memories that I've had at Yale and it's not uncommon that we have that sort of commentary from different providers who are years out sort of in the world, in the workforce, in their clinical training, and they sort of talk to us about ways of giving back. Every now and again we'll have an alumni, alumnus reach out and say, hey, you know, I have, you know, all this health care supplies. I need to get rid of it. Would you guys mind accepting it? And you know, within reason, if it's not expired, we're happy to take donations of health care items, and that just goes to show you the strength of that connection and collaboration. And so this is across all fields. And that just goes to show you the strength of that connection and collaboration. And so this is across all fields. We've had different volunteers who have now become attendings, who work with us, which is amazing that they're still giving back their time to our clinic and see the value in our clinic as well.
Speaker 1:We've had different organizations. Different students found organizations on campus. For example, the PAWS project was founded by members of Neighborhood Health Project in sort of expanding our offerings to foot health and foot care services and now, especially with PAWS, in collaboration with NHP, we do community health pantries. So we have pantries in different locations around New Haven to give out essential items when Neighborhood Health Project is not available to do so, including emergency contraception, condoms, socks, shoes, scarves, hand warmers, diapers, different items that patients have asked for in the past. Patients have asked for in the past.
Speaker 1:And so you know, I think the wealth of our organization really comes from the cross-curricular collaboration between different students in different schools and the really rich alumni collaborations that we continue to nurture today. Because you know our alumni really have gone into any career. I mean you name it, you know they'll be in it. It's, you know, a lot of community health folks. But there's people in medicine, in administration, there's people in sort of, you know, any career really in medicine, any career really in nursing a lot of different advocacy groups in public health school, and that network over the last 20 years has been really supportive in the work that we do.
Speaker 2:That wide range impact that these individuals have from NHP. I think that's brilliant. Your website mentioned we talked about this earlier about partnerships and collaboration with community primary care centers in the New Haven area. Can you elaborate on that role of NHP connectconnected patients to these centers and the importance of that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I'll just give some examples. I mean I routinely see patients who are recent arrivals from Ecuador or South America and they have not been able to appeal for primary care or they're undocumented and they don't have access to primary care due to cost or other barriers, and so you know these are some. Some people have really chronic illnesses and you know these illnesses can't really go too long without being, you know, treated, and so what we do at NHP is really try and provide patients with resources and information about these different clinics and then in some instances we do like a warm handoff where we actually physically accompany patients to the emergency department or we connect them with one of our partners. One organization that we've been doing a lot of physical referrals to, which has been great, has been a group called Project Access, which is a group that connects patients to secondary medical providers for different sort of advanced care that may not be offered at a primary care appointment, although I believe they do offer primary care and they do refer patients in that way, but mostly they're focused on specialists.
Speaker 1:They have a very interesting study now that is done by Yale researchers called Pressure Check, and this is a very exciting sort of cross-site project. In fact I believe it's cross-state. It's got four different states involved in this NIH-funded project on reducing community hypertension in places like barbershops, food pantries, churches, sororities. Our patients who are hypertensive have been able to gain really great benefits through Yale by connecting them with cardiologists and different sort of endocrinologists, through the process of monitoring them, through this grant, which obviously works, through Project Access, which is one of our trusted partners. So I guess the great thing is is that when you have so many wonderful partners, we don't have to take on all the burden ourselves. We just have to make a phone call or send an email and for the most part our patients do feel comfortable with that referral because they trust us, which is great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's how you actually bring about change, bring about medical outcomes by providing. I feel like NHP is more of like a mediator between clinics and hospitals and patients themselves. Bringing that first introduction to them to actual medical care I think is very important. In addition to providing pre-blood pressure and glucose screenings in patients with hospitals, you also provide here lifestyle and health counseling. What does counseling really involve, and can you share specific instances of which these efforts possibly impact a member of the community.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I mean I think that you know counseling is kind of, you know, a broad sort of term. We do have a lot of masters in public health students who are with us, and a lot of them are much more qualified than some of us in the medical world the PAs or the nurses or the MDs, I wouldn't say much more. But you know their whole focus is health education, and so a lot of them have a lot of passion and a lot of drive to educate not only us as providers but patients themselves on different ways of improving their health. So we have, through our collaborations, worked with MPH students. We have, through our collaborations, worked with MPH students. In fact, every year we have an internship position that's actually sponsored by the Office of Public Health Practice at the School of Public Health to encourage an MPHer to join us for a summer and conduct a project. Our last intern was Allie Webster, who worked together with myself to plan a wonderful community outreach event in collaboration with the Pride Center. Again, our whole mission as a clinic is to meet patients where they're at. Historically, that has been at 57 Olive, but there's really no reason, as we found out this year, that prevents us from going elsewhere. And so we asked some patients you know what would be beneficial to you, where can we best spread our clinic? And they said, well, why don't you start by going to some different community health events? So we've had, I think, about two events so far, the last year with Ali's help. One was IRIS, which is the Integrated Refugee Services provider. They had a health fair where we joined them, and then we hosted the first inaugural health and wellness village at the New Haven Pride Festival this last year, where we had about 20 different vendors, all different organizations, from like yoga studios to the Department of Public Health, to different organizations at Yale, which focused on screening for breast cancer, screening for HIV and AIDS, screening for different non-communicable diseases, different organizations like that, which really allowed us to again bring our partners together in a community space that felt safe and accessible to different community members that have historically been marginalized. So that allows us to offset the sort of counseling to professionals in the community, which is great, but then also gives us a lot of ideas about different sort of seasonal counseling that we can do so, for example, through those partnerships. A lot of those organizations left us with pamphlets, left us with their cell phone numbers, obviously, to sort of organize different seasonal counseling opportunities. So, for example, you know, during flu season, counseling patients about, you know, wearing a mask if they're immunocompromised, or you know, getting a vaccine, if it's towards summer, counseling patients through the Yale Dermatology Department on how important it is to wear sunscreen or check themselves for different sort of mole growths on their skin or get seen by a dermatologist. So these are all like really important collaborations that have allowed us to sort of orchestrate what it means to counsel patients, both through our, you know, permanent internship opportunity, which is every summer, usually an MPH student, although in the past we've had MBAs, MDs, pas and then through the different you know MDs, pas, and then through the different, you know, various outreach opportunities. We tailor our counseling accordingly, based on season and based on patient preference. So, oh and then one last thing, I'll mention this too.
Speaker 1:For a while there we also were very interested in nutrition. So this last year has been this last year we just restarted, but the last year in 2024, we kind of made a year that was focused on counseling patients on nutritional decision-making. We invited different registered dietitians and nutritionists to come and give counseling to patients who were interested in making healthy decisions. And through that collaboration we touched over a hundred patients right before they sort of made those decisions or immediately after they made those decisions in the pantry line, to not only connect them with resources for making good food decision making but how they could take the food that they had from the pantry and cook really healthy, cheap, nutritious meals that could help them improve their overall dietary needs. So ultimately, I think the great work that we're doing with Neighborhood Health Project could not be done in a silo. The education that we give to the community is always made with collaboration with community partners and, of course, with our wonderful MPH health educators.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now we kind of see all these different ways that you interact with the community. How can students get involved with NHB? What are the role of like volunteers from the med school, from Yale College, from even like New Haven residents? Like how can they get involved in helping advance NHPA?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. We are always open for, you know, community collaboration. So if people are interested in collaborating as an organization, they can feel free to reach out to myself. My email is just my first and last name, so ryansutherland at yaleedu. I'm happy for them to reach out to me and all of our team's information is on our website, which is nhpsitesyaleedu. We also accept volunteers from all of the health professional schools, I should say school of physician associate program or the nursing programs. You can reach out to us at any point and, and you know, we can definitely focus on getting you involved in our work. We usually onboard people twice a year, in February when we restart our clinic, and towards the end of summer when we start back for the fall. But you know we are open in certain cases for people to join at any point. So definitely feel free to reach out and you know we're happy to sort of explore opportunities both for collaboration and for volunteering positions.
Speaker 2:If there's like one last thing they want people to know about NHPA, what would that be?
Speaker 1:I mean I just think you know again, just to kind of, you know, clarify our role. I mean we are, we are in love with the community that we serve. We have been doing it for a long time and we're very trusted by our community partners, who we're so honored to continue to work with after all of these years since 2003. Work with after all of these years since 2003. I think the thing that I would like to leave students with more than anything else is that getting involved does not have to be something that's onerous in the community, despite how busy your schedule is as a student. I encourage anyone at any of the sort of health professional programs for as an undergrad, to really give back to New Haven because it's got a lot to offer beyond the Yale campus.
Speaker 1:I remember I was talking to one of my professors in graduate school, linda Nicolai, and she said you know, everybody wants to do global health and they forget that New Haven is part of the globe.
Speaker 1:So I think, as sort of a sort of summary statement, just remember that there are neighbors that we have in New Haven that are really suffering and need our assistance if we're able to give it to them, and they should lead the charge. They should be the ones that are voicing their concerns and asking, rather than sort of receiving, without so really sort of nothing about us, without us kind of keeping that mentality, that sort of anti-colonial global health mentality. I think is a really important thing for all of us. But just to remember that, you know, yale has a lot of, uh, wonderful things on campus, but there is a whole world out in New Haven, um, that is, um you know, some of it is is in need of assistance and uh, there's lots to do. You know there's. There's a never ending list of things to accomplish and anyone who's interested in global health, I wish them the best with their career and just know that that global health starts with, you know, one foot in front of the other out in your community.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah, and people supposed to do forget that that their own communities, even if it's not in New Haven, like across the country, a lot of urban centers, even rural communities. Starting in your community to improve public health efforts and public health landscapes, I think is where you can start making actual change and seeing that change right from your eyes. Yeah, thank you so much, ryan. Of course, thank you for coming on the show Absolutely and our episode of Health Voices. Thank you so much, ryan. Of course, thank you for coming on the show Absolutely and our episode of Health Voices.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. Yeah, it's been a pleasure.
Speaker 2:Health Voices is a podcast from the Public Health Coalition. We bring forward the leading voices in health, innovation and entrepreneurship, providing a platform for those addressing the leading public health challenges of our day. Health Voices is produced by Padraig Gavis-Georgie and I, fareed Salman, with support from the entire PhD board. If you have questions about the podcast or want to be featured in an episode, please email us at healthvoicespodcast at gmailcom or DM us at our Instagram, healthvoicespod. And if you enjoyed the episode, don't forget to leave us a review on spotify, youtube or apple podcasts. Thanks again for listening.