When Kim Douglas noticed a need for better parks in underserved Philadelphia communities, she teamed up with former population health professor Drew Harris to create the Park in a Truck program to convert empty city lots into beautiful city parks.
Throughout our history, Jefferson faculty, staff, students and alumni have bettered their communities as leaders in Philadelphia and throughout the world. Jefferson’s community of healers, builders and creators are always finding innovative ways to solve real-world problems and create a brighter future for everyone.
At Jefferson, we have an inherent responsibility to help those in need. Our staff, students, faculty and alumni all work collaboratively to provide access to much-needed resources and create better environments for underserved communities across our campuses and well beyond.
Children in urban environments need nature, but historically, redlined neighborhoods—or those that have experienced the withholding of certain services—don’t often get resources from the city to create these spaces. That’s why we wanted to create this toolkit, to share the resources needed to build a park from scratch, without assistance from the city.
Population health consultant/lecturer Drew Harris and Jefferson faculty member Kim Douglas started conceptualizing Park in a Truck in 2018. Their collaboration brought together the College of Architecture and the Built Environment with the College of Population Health to help bring their idea to life.
Community input and buy-in are crucial to the success of Park in a Truck, which creates not just physical spaces but neighborhood pride through design, construction and maintenance.
Ideally, each Park in a Truck built will have less and less involvement from us. We might get to the point where we don’t even know about them. They go to the Park in a Truck website, use our toolkit and then parks are created. It just becomes self-sustaining.
After success working in Philadelphia, the Park in a Truck program is now a toolkit that makes the entire project more sustainable and allows others to engage with the social responsibility of beautifying their community to create a better environment.
The toolkit walks users through six steps to create a model park in their community. Where one team only has so many resources, now people of all abilities can take the lessons and apply them where they live.
Jefferson instills a sense of responsibility to the greater community, as is evident in the robust service-oriented work of our alumni and students. Our graduates represent more than just their respective disciplines, utilizing collaboration and innovation to improve lives and create revolutionary change throughout the world.
Kenyans lack access to safe water, according to Water.org. How can these people get the water that they so desperately need?
Pre-medical studies student Michele Ganz spent several months working at a health clinic in Nairobi, Kenya, where people traveled long distances for safe water to avoid the diseases caused by tainted water exposure. Michele established WeStillAlive - An African Story (WESA) to raise awareness and money to build water towers and improve infrastructure throughout Africa.
Jefferson taught me to always be patient-centric, instilling guiding principles that I use daily: to make clinical recommendations based on what is safest for the patient and to always maintain my intellectual curiosity. These make me the clinician I am today.
Stephanie Caterson, MD ’99, RES ’04, and her husband and fellow alum Edward J. Caterson, MD, PhD ’03, helped a 30-year-old man from Texas reintegrate into society after a high-voltage power line accident left him critically injured. The Catersons served as part of the nation’s first full facial transplant team to help save the man at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 2011. Stephanie helped with key microsurgical steps while E.J. acted as lead surgeon.
Seeing a Black woman in the role of her childhood physician inspired Lauren Coaxum, MD ’20, to fulfill her dream of becoming a doctor. While earning her degree at Jefferson, Lauren founded anti-cyberbullying organization Think Before You Type to promote positive self-esteem and responsible internet use. She continues to help others and conduct extensive research as part of the Duke Emergency Medicine Residency Program.
Sean Lockyer ’99, College of Architecture and the Built Environment alumnus and founding principal of Studio AR&D Architects, has a unique architectural style that blends buildings into the surrounding landscape and incorporates outdoor elements indoors. Sean and his team have earned an American Architecture Award for their simple, awe-inspiring work.
After graduating from Jefferson and achieving early success in her career, Charlese Antoinette ’05, ended up homeless and couch-surfing in Los Angeles. Thanks to her resilience and industry connections, she landed a life-changing role as the costume designer for “Judas and the Black Messiah.” She continues to work as a movie and television costume designer for Hollywood’s A-list stars.
Social media star Brandon Edelman ’18, MS ’20 (aka @bran__flakezz) applied his fashion education to achieve success as an online content creator with more than 485,000 followers and millions of views. With a degree in fashion merchandising and a master’s in fashion design management, Brandon credits his great education for helping him gain work opportunities within the fashion industry that he can fall back on if his star status ever changes.
If we keep people focused on the great education they got at Jefferson, our hope is that they will want to give back for years to come.
When Carol Ammon, BSN ’17, and her partner and fellow alumna Marie Pinizzotto, MD ’88, noticed a lack of space for alumni returning to campus, they decided to fund the Pinizzotto-Ammon Alumni Center. The facility creates a home away from home for visiting alumni with custom spaces to relax, reminisce and connect with Jefferson’s past, present and future.
The COVID-19 pandemic tested the strength and grit of the entire Jefferson system. While much of the country was closing down, Jefferson took action, proactively planning and implementing policies that kept the hospital running to save lives and provide students with the education they needed to navigate the most challenging public health crisis in modern history. Now, Jefferson’s place in the community is stronger than ever, in part, because of our ingenuity, preparation and sheer determination.
We knew at the beginning of March that a storm was going to hit us. And it was kind of like the quiet and peacefulness before the storm.
We trained staff on how to use new equipment and adjusted policies. By mid-March, Dr. David Nash, founding dean emeritus of the Jefferson College of Population Health, urged people to separate and heed recommendations to limit spread and avoid surging case numbers happening in other parts of the world.
The same day as Dr. Nash’s plea, construction of a mobile testing center across from Thomas Jefferson University Hospital had begun. The site offered an easy drive-thru option for patients to get tested from the comfort of their own vehicles.
Understanding the financial impact of the virus, we launched the COVID-19 Better Together Fund to support employees and students. In three months, we raised more than $7.5 million to help 3,665 people.
Prior to receiving the COVID vaccine, Jefferson surveyed employees to assess their willingness to receive the vaccine and identify information gaps and barriers around the vaccine. 10,000+ responses later, we created a communications plan to disseminate scientific, factual information and formed a grassroots effort to proactively engage with Jefferson minority populations that identified a level of mistrust of the medical community. We continued to monitor efficacy data and increase vaccine accessibility.
Thomas Jefferson University programs already offered some online programs when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, giving us a head start on remote learning.
In March 2020, the University moved all classes from in-person to online and applied predictive modeling to inform next steps. We successfully deployed a HyFlex model — a combination of in-person and online learning — in August 2020.
"We had some experience in this, but we were still predominantly an in-person university. We quickly realized that there were many questions that needed to be asked. What hardware did we need that we didn’t already have? What software did we need?"
Faculty prepared for these transitions and were ready to guide students into unknown territory with the HyFlex model of education. We offered individual coaching and 100+ group sessions for faculty. We also focused on making our facilities safe for in-person learning.
"We needed to get [our studios and labs] up and running, and that involved figuring out room capacities, taping off desks, looking at cleaning and ventilation. Hand sanitizers and desk sanitizers were everywhere. Plexiglass barriers were installed."
Keeping students safe and comfortable was top-of-mind throughout the pandemic. We increased access to disability, mental and behavioral health resources, as well as tutoring, advising and other campus services such as dining. We encouraged students to follow safe practices, and we implemented a dashboard to track and stop the spread.
When we look back at the decisions that were made, I felt that they were in line with our institutional values — putting people first, doing the right thing and being bold and thinking differently.
face shields were created by an estimated 100 Jefferson student volunteers to meet PPE supply demands.
It may be years before we fully understand the pandemic’s mental and physical toll on hospital caregiving teams: The effects of weeks of physical exhaustion exacerbated by waves of stress, anxiety and frustration and, for many, depression and insomnia. Even between the surges in case numbers, caregivers worked long shifts to treat patients, including very sick COVID-19 patients, under stressful conditions; too often, they witnessed multiple patients die, unattended by family members, during a single day.
At the same time, these dedicated caregivers feared that, despite all their precautions, they might contract COVID-19 themselves; and, worse, that they might expose their families to the virus. Many isolated themselves from their loved ones, only increasing the pressures and anxieties they felt. Thousands of heroes, across 17 hospitals, saved countless lives and pulled us through this unprecedented time.
Throughout their time at Jefferson, our students, faculty and staff learn how to share their knowledge and abilities to make a meaningful impact on the world around them. Guided by our legacy of compassionate care and our unwavering commitment to being responsible citizens of the world in which we live, we will continue to better our communities and assist those in need.
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