CosmoGirl! honors JHU students

Three Hopkins seniors debuted in the December/January issue of the national magazine Cosmo Girl! as one of the top ten recipients of the CosmoGirl! of the Year Award. Lily Daniali, Solmaz Pirzadeh and Tannaz Rasouli were recognized for their work in the student-run organization Project Prevent.

The girls were nominated by Amy Cowles, the senior media relations representative at the Johns Hopkins Office of News and Information Services.

"We didn't think it was too serious at first," said Daniali about when they first learned they were nominated.

Pirzadeh and Daniali said they assumed so many people were nominated that they probably would not win, but then late in the summer, they were notified of their award.

The magazine held photo shoots and made a promotional video about Project Prevent.

"I think it's great that a magazine like CosmoGirl! encourages girls to stand up for what they believe in and pursue their dreams. I am really proud to be a part of that," said Rasouli.

All of them agreed that they enjoyed getting the word out to adolescent girls about Project Prevent and helping influence them to pursue their own dreams through this "self-empowering type of magazine," as Pirzadeh described it.

Pirzadeh said the main goal of Project Prevent is to "provide free primary care prevention services and screenings to the Baltimore community."

The three girls agreed that most underprivileged people today, who cannot afford annual visits to the doctor, wait until they become unbearably sick to visit the doctor. This method prevents catching diseases at a curable stage.

Daniali added that Project Prevent "deals with preventive health issues...for people who don't have access to regular check-ups, like most other people [in the United States] do."

Project Prevent started a year and a half ago, when Pirzadeh and Camille Nixon, an alumnus of the class of 2002, approached Adriene Breckenridge, senior academic advisor, with a proposal.

Breckenridge agreed to sponsor the girls.

"There is a great need in the community for a program like this," Breckenridge said. "I was very pleased they came up with the idea."

Daniali, Pirzadeh and Rasouli also gained support from Vini Meyers, the coordinator for student programs at the Community Relations and Volunteer Services Office in Levering.

Meyers saw Project Prevent as an organization that was "sorely needed."

She saw it as a "really good group for me to advise" because of her past experiences working with other non-profit medical organization.

They then applied for the community service grant offered by the JHU Alumni Association, which provided them with $800.

Originally, said Pirzadeh, Project Prevent had broader aims. They wanted to work on the distrust between the people of the Baltimore community and doctors, educational programming and inefficient health services. They also considered running their program alongside a church, as a way to draw people in and help ensure the trust between their services and the community members. Rasouli said they wanted to provide "most help to most people," and, as Pirzadeh added, they realized that "prevention is the best health tool that can help the most amounts of people."

Meyers said one challenge that they encountered involved communicating with the different agencies and trying to contact the people for help.

Breckenridge said that, when concerning the participation of agencies, "a lot of them are willing to do it if they get it into their calendar early."

The three undergraduates managed to assemble between 16 and 20 non-profit organizations, such as the Red Cross, that supplied needy members of the Baltimore community with free health care. Daniali, Pirzadeh and Rasouli went to different communities to advertise for the fair.

According to Rasouli, they went to supermarkets, barber shops and other local stores to spread the word about the fair. With the help of Salud, they were also able to advertise in Spanish.

"People were very receptive...they really appreciated it," said Pirzadeh about the reactions they received while handing out flyers and putting up posters.

Daniali noticed that there seemed to be an "awareness that people need to reform their community."

The fair was held on March 2, at the Anvil Facility Center in West Baltimore. Rasouli described it as a "one stop health shop" for those who would rarely receive medical attention. The location was perfect, said Pirzadeh, because it was in the center of the areas Project Prevent was trying to target. While the main services offered were the health-care services, the fair also offered food as an incentive for the patients. Approximately 100 people showed up to the fair.

Daniali said that for the next fair they want to "increase the social services offered. We are trying to think of innovative ways to get tested and then have follow ups after the fair." For instance, they would like to offer a tuberculosis test and then have the people return in a couple of days to see the results. She adds that they also want to offer occupational and physical therapy.

This coming year they want to organize the fair with different stations so that everyone stops everywhere and ends up with a final sheet delineating the results.

Also on their agenda is revamping what Daniali described as the "yellow pages of social services." Breckenridge described the guide as a "resource guide for services in the community." The main problem, said Daniali, is that the organizations are "decentralized" and unorganized to the point that "no one knows the other one exists," making it harder for them to work together to help the community in need.

The girls will be updating the information provided by the book, adding new organizations and distributing it around the Baltimore Community. The book should help inform people of the different unique organizations existent to help people with distinct problems. With the availability of the manual, fewer people should be "slipping through the cracks," as Daniali put it.

Breckenridge added, "They're doing a really outstanding job, I'm really proud of what they've done." She openly recommends to her pre-med advisees, specifically public health, to go speak to Salmaz and say that "it is critical that public health students get out there and work in underrepresented communities...they will be exposed to the population they will probably be working with in their future.