Einstein Students Deliver a Cornucopia of Health
This year for the first time, students at Albert Einstein College of Medicine did not need to leave campus to volunteer in Montefiore Einstein’s annual Healthy Holiday Initiative, a massive effort that provides fresh, seasonal, and culturally relevant produce free to members of our community. One weekday morning shortly before Thanksgiving, dozens of volunteers—mostly first-year medical students—came to Lubin Dining Hall to fill 500 bags assembly-line style. “There were apples, potatoes, sweet potatoes, zucchini, squash, onions, carrots, cassava, yucca, plantains, and more, about 5,000 pounds in all,” said Melissa Cebollero, associate vice president of community affairs at Montefiore Einstein, who organized the event.
![Dean Yaron Tomer (center) with student volunteers (from left) Sachin Mehta, Eleni Kohilakis, Lakshmi Mahajan, Nick Boonsukha, and Sawyer Peralta]()
Dean Yaron Tomer (center) with student volunteers (from left) Sachin Mehta, Eleni Kohilakis, Lakshmi Mahajan, Nick Boonsukha, and Sawyer Peralta
The student volunteers are all enrolled in Einstein’s required service-learning course, which pairs students with community-based organizations to foster meaningful connections between students and their community. The bags filled at Einstein, each of which weighed about 10 pounds and could feed a family of four, were distributed through these partner organizations to Bronx residents.
Serving Up a Healthier Future
“Montefiore Einstein really practices what they preach,” said Lauren Roth, M.D. ’16, director of the service-learning course and a pediatrician at Montefiore. “The institutional commitment to community engagement and achieving health equity is highlighted through initiatives like this one. Food insecurity is a major concern in the Bronx, and by providing 500 families with fresh produce for Thanksgiving, we show our investment in reducing food insecurity in one small way.”
![Holly Nuthmann (center left) and Lauren Roth from Einstein’s service-learning program with Irene Rosario and Melinton Badillo from New Settlement, one of the community-based organizations that distributed bags to community members.]()
Holly Nuthmann (center left) and Lauren Roth from Einstein’s service-learning program with Irene Rosario and Melinton Badillo from New Settlement, one of the community-based organizations that distributed bags to community members.
The event also served as an opportunity for Einstein students to gain some insight into these issues and help address them. “We’re training our medical students to think about social determinants of health”—non-medical factors such as food, housing, transportation, education, and unemployment—“and how to connect patients to resources,” said Dr. Roth. “In our service-learning course, we aim to instill a sense of social responsibility and cultural humility in our students, as they learn from the expertise and history of community-based organizations serving our diverse patient population. Providing culturally relevant produce and recipes reminds our students the importance of taking a patient- or community-centered approach to care.”
Menu Makeovers
The Healthy Holiday Initiative team included classic Thanksgiving recipes into the bags, tweaked with health in mind. “November is American Diabetes Awareness Month,” said Ms. Cebollero, “so we looked at the sugar content of the traditional sweet potato recipe—the one with the marshmallows and brown sugar—and took some of that sugar out.” Representatives from community-based organizations in the Bronx picked up the bags at Einstein and delivered them to distribution sites where people were waiting to receive them.
Most of the produce came from the Hunts Point Market in the Bronx. “We work with a small MWBE [Minority and/or Women-owned Business Enterprise] vendor, who ’s at that market at 3 a.m. every morning haggling with his suppliers,” Ms. Cebollero. The Healthy Holiday Initiative started five years ago with one event at 10,000 pounds. “Now we’re at eight events and 70,000 pounds in four counties where Montefiore Einstein has a presence—the Bronx, Westchester, Rockland, and Orange,” she said.
Posted on: Monday, December 23, 2024