What is the Baxter Fellowship?​

The ASF Baxter Fellowship is a new program within ASF where applicants have the opportunity to act as patient navigators within their community project.  While following a similar structure of the Fellowship, being an ASF Baxter Fellow will require applicants to work on specific Legacy projects (see below).

 

Modeled in part on the highly successful Dallas Schweitzer Chapter’s Patient Navigation Program, ASFHG staff will partner with the Patient Care Intervention Center (PCIC) to create a curriculum to train allied health graduate students using PCIC’s Community Resources eXchange (CRX), the most comprehensive referral database in Houston. 

 

ASF Baxter Fellows will also be full ASF Fellows and receive the training and mentorship that all Fellows receive. In addition to this, there will be a curriculum based on what is used by the Dallas Schweitzer chapter’s Patient Navigation Program. This curriculum has provided such a novel and successful way to teach patient navigation to medical students that the results have already been accepted for publication in the scientific literature.

 

This two 2.5-hour class curriculum would be offered to all Fellows but mandated for those projects that involve ASF Baxter Fellows. PCIC would give our ASF Baxter Fellows access to and training on the CRX and the Unified Care Continuum Platform - Community Edition, allowing communication between the ASF Baxter Fellows and the agencies to whom they refer clients. This would enable Fellows to make referrals with real-time feedback and give clients access to the most up-to-date and complete listing of community resources. All ASF Baxter Fellows would be provided tablets for the year to access the CRX in the field.

 

This program will be a ground-breaking enhancement of what we can offer our Fellows and make them better change agents for health equity by digging deeper to understand the underlying systemic reasons surrounding the health outcomes of marginalized individuals. 

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Projects involved in this pilot (you must be applying to take on one of these projects to qualify for the ASF Baxter Fellowship):​

• Moms to Moms: This addresses maternal health inequities and literacy through education sessions at Lyndon B Johnson and Ben Taub Hospitals, aiming to improve postpartum maternal and fetal health along with social wellbeing. If interested in taking on this project as an ASF Baxter Fellow, please contact erika.s.fanous@uth.tmc.edu, cara.he@bcm.edu, or Lillibeth.Snellman@bcm.edu.

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• PCIC Integration at HOMES Clinic: Fellows are addressing homelessness in Houston by implementing a social services platform that enables student volunteers at HOMES Clinic (medical and pharmacy students) to be more connected to social service providers in Houston and help coordinate delivery of social services to the unhoused population. If interested in taking on this project as an ASF Baxter Fellow, please contact colton.andrews@bcm.edu or panayiotis.d.kontoyiannis@uth.tmc.edu.

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• Nalox-OWN: Fellows are taking a stand against the opioid epidemic by establishing a naloxone training and resource navigation program for Houston’s unhoused population at the HOMES clinic. If interested in taking on this project as an ASF Baxter Fellow, please contact cplee@utmb.edu or malnguye@utmb.edu.

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• BrIDging Resources: Fellows are addressing barriers to access of social services in Galveston, Texas by assisting with ID application and resource navigation for the unhoused and underserved community. If interested in taking on this project as an ASF Baxter Fellow, please contact anlahitt@utmb.edu or jango@utmb.edu.

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• Project SEED: Fellows are addressing the difficulties the disability community faces in accessing resources vital to their daily functioning and well-being. By engaging in conversations with adults with neurological injuries as well as the families of children with spina bifida, Project S.E.E.D. aims to increase awareness and utilization of resources available to the disability community. If interested in taking on this project as an ASF Baxter Fellow, please contact Madilyn.L.Feik@uth.tmc.edu or sanjay.v.neerukonda@uth.tmc.edu.

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• New Hope Housing Patient Navigation Project (NEW): One of the projects we are very excited about starting is a Patient Navigation project at the Reed location. This project would be a Baxter project, in which the Fellow would create a connection with 2-3 families throughout the year and refer and connect them to appropriate resources that they need at the time, with the help of experienced social workers and training given by ASF. If interested in this project, please contact Sandra Martinez (sandra.m@newhopehousing.com) and Cesar Ramirez (Cesar.R@newhopehousing.com) and CC Carol Jacob (carol.jacob@asfhg.org) with the subject "ASF Baxter Fellowship Interest".

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Please visit our Current Projects page to learn more about these projects and connect with the Fellows currently doing them.

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Requirements for ASF Baxter Fellows in addition to standard Fellowship requirements:

All of the following tasks will be counted as service hours that will be applied to your service hours requirement for the Fellowship.

• Attend 2-3 additional in person didactic sessions in Houston (around 5 hours total)

• Use the PCIC database and focus on resource navigation in your project

• Complete additional quality improvement surveys

• Attend periodic group Zoom check-ins (around 30 minutes per month)

• Answer an additional question on the monthly report about your patient navigation experience

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If you have any questions or are interested in becoming an ASF Baxter Fellow, please reach out to Program Director, Carol Jacob, at carol.jacob@asfhg.org.

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