Melissa Silverman, a student in Worcester State University’s M.S. in Nursing – Community and Public Health program, has been selected as a 2017 Paul Ambrose Scholar.
This one-year fellowship is awarded by the Association for Prevention Teaching and Research and the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Silverman was selected from a highly competitive pool of hundreds of health professions students with interests in prevention and public health who applied from all 50 states and U.S. territories. Of this applicant pool, only 40 health professions students from allopathic medicine, dentistry, graduate nursing, graduate physician assistant, osteopathic medicine, pharmacy, physical/occupational therapy, and public health are selected for the Paul Ambrose Scholars Program.
This unique experience brings the students together under the guidance of Association for Prevention Teaching and Research and the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to attend a three-day public health leadership symposium, which serves to guide them in their own implementation of a micro-grant funded, community-based health education project.
Silverman traveled to Savannah, Ga., April 5-7 for the symposium. She learned in-depth information about social determinants of health, new approaches to health-service delivery such as the Health-in-all-Policies approach, geographic information system technology, marketing and public health communication strategies, and Public Health 3.0, an evolving public health model that emphasizes collaboration across environmental, policy, and systems.
Next, she will receive mini-grant funds to implement a public-health or disease-prevention project focused on one of the Healthy People 2020 Leading Health Indicators on campus or in her community within the next year.
Silverman is the fourth WSU student selected as a Paul Ambrose Scholar in Nursing since 2010. Previous Paul Ambrose Scholars—all students in the M.S. in Nursing – Community and Public Health program—were Bet Key Wong, Mary Collaro, and Lisa Chan.