Ginsberg Center E-Newsletter
February 2009
No Simple Solutions
U-M Medical School student organizes SLATE to create teams from across eight graduate schools to help disadvantaged youth and their families
Complicated problems, said Jacob Kurlander, call for complicated solutions. That's why Kurlander, a fourth-year medical student at the University of Michigan, founded the SLATE - Service Learning and Trans-disciplinary Education - Project. SLATE is a new mentorship program where students from eight of the university's graduate schools work with underserved youth and their families to combat the complicated effects of poverty.
SLATE teaches U-M students in the various professional schools the issues and resources each will face once they graduate. "Hopefully, SLATE will teach students from different schools to work with one another so they can practice better and create solutions," Kurlander said.
At the same time, SLATE reaches out into the community and serves as a resource for medical, dental, legal, and other services. SLATE students work one-on-one with area youth. "The goal is to educate graduate students while proving a service," Kurlander said. SLATE has received funding from the Ginsberg Center and is partnering with the Community Action Network.
While SLATE students mentor area youth, they also teach each other. When medical school students, for example, work with social work students, they can come to understand the social determinants of health and the economic and environmental factors that affect healthcare, Kurlander said. Education students, for example, can help others learn how to work with high-energy youth, he said. "There's little opportunity in medical school to interact with students from other U-M professional schools."
SLATE draws students from medicine, dentistry, education, law, social work, nursing, public health, and pharmacy, and organizes them into teams that work in schools and community centers in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. Some 24 U-M students across the eight schools were organized into three interdisciplinary teams for this pilot year.
While they work in teams, each SLATE student is paired with a youth between the ages of eight and 18. They help with homework, go to the library, or even see a movie. "None of us are licensed to practice medicine or law or social work," Kurlander said. "But we can provide advocacy." The teams meet regularly and with and a faculty/community advisory board. SLATE steers students and their families to resources, from flu vaccines to dental care.
Kurlander also hopes SLATE will plant the idea of working with underserved populations once members graduate, he said. Many students enroll in graduate school with the idealism to help underserved populations, only to lose it by graduation. "Only two percent of medical school students want to go into primary care," he said. "And there's even a trend with social work students going into personal therapy rather than community work. And there's a huge oral health disparity in this country. I hope students see the choices."