WASHINGTON (Oct. 30, 2014) — Today, the Rodham Institute hosted its 2014 Summit to promote health equity. Attendees included leaders from local and national health advocacy organizations, as well as Hillary Rodham Clinton and Clinton Health Matters Initiative Chief Executive Officer Rain Henderson. The Institute, which is housed within the George Washington University (GW) School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS) and supported by the GW Medical Faculty Associates, seeks to apply the transformative power of education to help future and current health care providers achieve health equity in Washington, D.C.
“Over the last year, the Rodham Institute has worked toward identifying sustainable solutions to promote health equity through education and training,” said Jehan ‘Gigi’ El-Bayoumi, M.D., founding director of the Rodham Institute and associate professor of medicine at SMHS. “Having an open dialogue and working with leaders of existing community programs and organizations, as encouraged in today’s Summit, is paramount to meeting our goals.”
At the Summit, the Rodham Institute awarded a $5,000 grant to Breathe DC, an organization dedicated to reducing asthma and lung disease in D.C., for their proposal to create a parent advocacy group to improve housing and health conditions for children and their families.
Poster presentations by the Institute’s community partners and students involved in the Rodham Institute’s Health Education Leadership Programs, a comprehensive pipeline program designed to cultivate student interest in diverse health professions among underrepresented minority youth, were exhibited during the event. Discussions on health professions training, workforce development, and community collaboration were also an important part of the Summit.
“It’s an incredible honor to have this Institute named in memory of my mother,” said Clinton. “The mission of the Institute is so much in line with what we are doing at the Clinton Foundation and is also in line with my mother’s own upbringing and her concerns about caring for people who are left out and left behind.”
Founded in 2013, in honor of the late Dorothy Rodham, the Rodham Institute’s focus is partnering with the D.C. community to achieve health equity through the education and cultivation of the next generation of community-oriented health care providers. Through creating and supporting programs, such as a new health equity elective at SMHS, the Rodham Institute is training future and current health care providers how to use innovative strategies to improve health care for all. In the years ahead, the Rodham Institute hopes to establish practices that will serve as a benchmark for other medical and health sciences schools across the country.
