November 1, 2024

By August Ryan

More than 40 Drexel University College of Medicine MD program students participated in a fall 2024 showcase of community outreach projects and best practices. The weekend conference, held annually by the Society of Student-Run Free Clinics (SSRFC), took place in Philadelphia this year at Drexel University.

The SSRFC allows highly-motivated medical students from across the United States to share research findings, as well as ideas and best practices, from their work running free health clinics for the underserved in their communities. Since its founding in 2010, the SSRFC has fostered support and project collaboration between peers across U.S. medical schools.

Two student-run free clinic focused programs help College of Medicine students build patient care and communication skills and give back to the Philadelphia and West Reading, Pa., communities in which they live and learn. The Health Advocacy Practicum (HAP) course is a first- and second-year curricular requirement. Many medical students also volunteer for extracurricular participation in Health Outreach Project (HOP) clinics.

Ifra Malik, MD class of 2025, served during her second year of medical school as a HOP program coordinator at the Eliza Shirley House, a Center City-based resource for mothers and children facing homelessness. She worked last year through this fall to educate youth on skin health, including sun protection.

Her project group used American Academy of Dermatology guidelines to teach proper sunscreen use to young people and their guardians, including debunking the myth that one's racial background or skin complexion determine their need for sunscreen. All people need sun protection when spending time outside: learn more here.

Students branched out this fall to include lessons on other aspects of skin care and hygiene. Young people at the Eliza Shirley House learned about identifying common skin issues like bug bites and poison ivy reactions, and about preventing and treating acne.

Although skin health is important for everyone, the project’s student leaders wanted to focus on providing resources – including sample products – to youth facing homelessness.

“People who are living in transitional housing centers often have very limited resources, given that they may only stay in a shelter for a few weeks to a month,” Malik said. “We wanted to help kids understand their skin and give them resources they might not otherwise get through the shelter. We wanted to teach them how to care for their skin while instilling more confidence in their skin.”

She and her College of Medicine peers were excited to share the initiative with SSRFC conference attendees, and to receive feedback to help refine their work. The group also got inspiration to explore expansion for their own outreach after talking with other dermatology-focused student leaders about grant funding, materials donations, and hygiene kit distribution.

Their project was one of few presented at the 2024 conference that dealt with skin education specific to youth. Similarly, HOP’s microgreens project, a multifaceted effort that helps empower underserved Philadelphians to grow their own fresh, highly nutrient-dense food, was also unique among outreach presented at the conference.

“Our projects are novel in that sphere of the conference, where most of the projects are based on some kind of clinical aspect,” said Ashley Dillon, MD class of 2026 and a microgreens project participant. “I think that's important, because we really advocate for health education. And we know that healthy eating and dietary patterns really can affect our health, so, I think our work is well-suited for SSRFC as well.”

The microgreens clinic submitted several sub-projects to the 2024 SSRFC event. One initiative aimed to expand the provision of kits from Philadelphia community members to also include College of Medicine students in need of improved access to healthy food.

“We built an urban garden in the Health Sciences Building,” Dillon said. “It’s very small right now but we want to scale it up. At the conference, we talked about implementing a program like ours: how to propose the idea to an academic board, how to work with building management and maintenance to ensure the project works for the space, and how best to launch the project based on your budget.”

Students shared during the conference how they are putting the urban greenhouse to use, including cooking microgreen-rich meals to be passed out to Kensington neighborhood residents during street medicine outreach by another HOP team. They additionally outlined processes for coordinating peers’ harvests from the garden, as well as plans to teach their peers how best to cook with microgreens.

Dillon and her peers got to learn not only from other clinics’ presentations, but also from health care technology vendors whose projects aim to solve problems commonly facing underserved patients.

"This conference specifically, because it's so student-focused, is very collaborative, which I think is absolutely incredible,” Dillon said. “Everyone has a very similar mission and very similar desire. People are very collaborative in terms of finding ways that we can continue to overcome some of the barriers we might be seeing in our projects.”