Health Care and Wellness

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan awarded Oakland University $50,000 to pilot test a "Prescription for Health" program that connects Pontiac residents at risk for chronic disease with vouchers for fresh fruit and vegetables and opportunities to be active. This project brought together Healthy Pontiac, We Can! partners Oakland County Health Division, Honor Community Health, Mercy Place Clinic, Gary Burnstein Community Health Clinic, and local health and wellness partners MaxOut Fitness, SmashHit Kickboxing, Anytime Fitness, St. Joseph Mercy Oakland Wellness Center, Sprout Fresh Food Store, All Saints Episcopal Church produce market, Oakland County Farmers Market, and Eastern Market.

The Oakland County Sheriff’s PAL program secured a $200,000 grant from United Way of Southeast Michigan to expand youth recreation and mentoring programming throughout the city. PAL has served over 1,000 families in 2018, and provides opportunities in basketball (including midnight basketball programs on Friday nights), cheer/dance/tumbling, soccer, baseball/tee-ball, karate, and mentorship programs. The PAL program, led by the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office, is working to strengthen collaborations with Wild Dogs Futbol Club, Pontiac Public Library, and the City of Pontiac Youth Recreation and Enrichment Center, among others.

Healthy Pontiac, We Can! is a group with members from local hospitals, mental health agencies, human service agencies, schools, churches, government agencies, and the Pontiac community.

For more information, contact Dr. Jennifer Lucarelli, lucarell@oakland.edu or healthypontiac@gmail.com.

The Passport to Medicine program (P2M) is a program developed to promote healthcare careers among underserved and underrepresented populations. The program targets Pontiac middle school students, to inspire them students to pursue a career in healthcare. This is achieved in a multi-faceted way during the academic year: tailored monthly in-classroom interactive sessions led by medical students (2017: one classroom with 25 students; 2018: six classrooms with nearly 200 students), healthcare-related experiential activities at the School of Medicine (OUWB) and the Troy Beaumont Clinical Skills Center, and a year-long pen-pal/mentoring program encouraging adolescents to discuss academic, career, social-emotional, or other issues.

The P2M program has collaborated with two OUWB student interest groups, the American Medical Women’s Association and the Pediatric Interest Group to accomplish various aspects of this multi-faceted program. These student groups create longitudinal relationships with middle school students through the regularly scheduled in-classroom sessions and can use this relationship to recruit students for experiential activities at OUWB. Members of the Pediatric Interest Group recently presented on their programming at the 2019 University of Michigan Conference on Adolescent Health.