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LEADS Students Special Project

Digital stories created by LEADS Students

 

During the 2010 LEADS Summer program as a one-time special project students created digital stories of how they have been impacted by their community project or an event that has impacted them as medical students. Here are two of their stories.  We hope you enjoy them.


JESSICA KOHRING - I am originally from Bay Village, Ohio (a suburb West of Cleveland). I went to Wake Forest University in North Carolina and after graduation I moved out to Denver in the summer of 2007. My interest in working with the Harm Reduction Action Center stems from my experience in working with a syringe exchange program back in Cleveland during the summer after my sophomore year in college. I volunteered at an urban free clinic and had the opportunity to ride on the syringe exchange outreach van to distribute harm reduction supplies to I.V. drug users and to exchange their dirty needles for new ones. The bill passed in May 2010 by the Governor Ritter legalizing syringe exchange was a huge step in the right direction for public health in Colorado. My goal for the results of my summer LEADS project with the Harm Reduction Action Center is to continue to remove the stigma from I.V. drug users and improve their access to healthcare.


NATE REICH - I chose to do this story because it keeps me grounded as I go through my medical training. Being a doctor involves a lot of responsibility, and for better or worse, power. When you are taking care of patients, their health is really in your hands. Sometimes I find myself thinking that my chosen career is somehow special because of this. But when I think that someone I barely knew, who had little to no education, could have such an impact on the lives of a whole community, it reminds me that medicine is just one of the many paths to improving the lives of others.