Stanford Report, April 11, 2007

Medical students get Bay Area Schweitzer fellowships

Three Stanford students are among 12 selected for the inaugural Bay Area Albert Schweitzer Fellowship Program, a local collaboration that is part of a national program.

The students are Prasanna Ananth, a medical student who is completing a master's degree in public health at UC-Berkeley; Steven Lin, a first-year medical student; and Elizabeth Chao, a doctoral candidate in biochemistry. Each of them have designed and will implement a yearlong project of service through a community-based agency.

Ananth will work with the Ravenswood City School District in East Palo Alto to teach classes on asthma symptoms, treatment and management for youth. Lin and Chao will implement the first comprehensive hepatitis B initiative at the Pacific Free Clinic in east San Jose. They will work with the Asian Liver Center at Stanford to provide free hepatitis B testing, vaccination, treatment and education for all Asian and Pacific Islanders with low income, no insurance and limited English proficiency.

The U.S. Schweitzer Fellows Program, begun in 1991, involves more than 125 graduate students in health-related fields to assist communities where health needs are not being met. The Bay Area program is a collaboration between UC-Berkeley, UC-San Francisco and Stanford's Office of Community Health. For more information about the Bay Area program, contact Evelyn Tu at 725-8799 or evelynh@stanford.edu.