Illinois Medicine

S J JoshUA lAWRenZ R o c k fo rd oshua laWRenz, MD '14, says his lifelong dedication to service stems from a strong christian faith. along with volunteering at the Rockford campus' bridge clinic, during medical school he has given back through his church and through carpenter's Place, a Rockford facility that supports homeless people in securing housing and employment. his commitment led his classmates and teachers to choose him for induction into the Gold humanism honor society, which promotes character and service among physicians. in addition, lawrenz, an M4, is a member of the underserved Pathways Program, an extracurricular program through which students study best practices for serving the underrepresented. in March, he completed a fourth-year elective rotation in orthopaedic surgery at the christian Medical college in southern india along with many other uPP participants, and his uPP work has included outreach and clinic work in underserved rural illinois communities. he began his residency in orthopaedic surgery in July. one of his most memorable experiences in medical school was leading the deployment of a service project that yielded visible results over the course of one very productive day. in 2012 lawrenz was recruited to serve as student leader of an effort to significantly expand a program providing a day of free flu shots to uninsured and impoverished Rockford residents. the project was initiated by the bridge clinic, a free clinic for uninsured people in Rockford spearheaded by faculty member and eR physician John Rudzinski, MD. lawrenz organized five vaccine sites across the community and helped recruit and train second-year medical students to administer vaccines, as more than 120 students and faculty from six medical, pharmacy and nursing schools volunteered. in 2011 the flu shot project vaccinated about 100 people at a single site. under lawrenz's leadership, in 2012 the program vaccinated around 500. "you have to continue to do community outreach to keep that flame alive inside of you," he says. "college and medical school were good times to immerse myself in these experiences so that when i become busier i'll already have the insight on how to make them happen." While the vaccine day started as a community outreach project, it also served as a communitywide exercise in disaster preparedness, mirroring the way the community would respond to a natural disaster or infectious disease outbreak. the day also was the first step in building camaraderie amongst Rockford's hospitals and the institutions that provided student and faculty volunteers. lawrenz coauthored a case study on that aspect of the day for the american Journal of Disaster Medicine. PAVen AUJlA U r b a n a - C h a m p a ig n ince 2009, the avicenna community health center has provided free health care to uninsured and underinsured members of the urbana-champaign community. the clinic is funded almost entirely on donations and run entirely by volunteers, including practitioners and students from the university of illinois. it is a vital part of the community: the clinic had 1,750 patient visits in 2010 and 2011, and 58 percent of those patients said they would not have sought care if avicenna didn't exist. like many coM students, M3 Paven aujla started at avicenna as a triage volunteer meeting with patients and presenting their cases to providers. aujla, who had volunteered previously at a homeless shelter and a food clinic in boston and as a rape counselor in new york, spent a year as assistant clinic manager before becoming clinic manager a year ago. as manager, she has guided the clinic through significant growth, new partnerships and expanded services. aujla credits an active and supportive board of directors and a large stable of eager volunteers with making avicenna run smoothly. the numerous changes she has helped oversee at avicenna include several new partnerships, such as relocating the clinic into a shared space with Promise healthcare, which charges patients on a sliding scale. the partnership allows avicenna to continue to offer expanded services through referrals to Promise. aujla launched an outreach program that puts avicenna volunteers in the Daily bread soup kitchen to counsel patrons about healthy lifestyles, provide basic health services and, when necessary, book them appointments at avicenna. she has spearheaded partnerships with other student groups, like bringing in medical and nursing students to serve as translators, nutrition student groups to provide healthy lifestyle workshops, or community pharmacists to advise on prescriptions. aujla also conceived of a soon-to-launch, free pharmacy run out of the clinic that's supplied through donations from pharmaceutical companies and Direct Relief, a national non-profit. While managing the clinic, aujla also completed a PhD in neuroscience in 2013, and in May 2014 she completed her M2 year as part of the MD/PhD Medical scholar program in urbana. all of her free time goes to avicenna, she says, but community work is a vital "sanity check" and a way to maintain perspective while otherwise rooted in her busy student life. "i hope it inspires other students when they get their first interactions at a clinic like this, when they see people in need and how grateful they are for health care," aujla says. "i hope they'll remember that when they become providers and come back to volunteer here or wherever they're living." 30 | S U M M e R 2 014

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