Feinberg
Northwestern Medicine | Northwestern University | Faculty Profiles

News Center

  • Categories
    • Campus News
    • Disease Discoveries
    • Clinical Breakthroughs
    • Education News
    • Scientific Advances
  • Press Releases
  • Media Coverage
  • Podcasts
  • Editor’s Picks
    • COVID-19
    • Cardiology
    • Cancer
    • Neurology and Neuroscience
    • Aging and Longevity
    • Artificial Intelligence in Medicine
  • News Archives
  • About Us
    • Media Contact
    • Share Your News
    • News Feeds
    • Social Media
    • Contact Us
Menu
  • Categories
    • Campus News
    • Disease Discoveries
    • Clinical Breakthroughs
    • Education News
    • Scientific Advances
  • Press Releases
  • Media Coverage
  • Podcasts
  • Editor’s Picks
    • COVID-19
    • Cardiology
    • Cancer
    • Neurology and Neuroscience
    • Aging and Longevity
    • Artificial Intelligence in Medicine
  • News Archives
  • About Us
    • Media Contact
    • Share Your News
    • News Feeds
    • Social Media
    • Contact Us
Home » Student Volunteer Honored with AAMC Scholarship
Uncategorized

Student Volunteer Honored with AAMC Scholarship

By medwebDec 4, 2008
Share
Facebook Twitter Email

Student Volunteer Honored with AAMC Scholarship

(L to R) Dr. Carol Aschenbrener, AAMC executive vice president, and Tamika Smith

From teaching low-income housing residents in Chicago how to eat healthier to treating underprivileged patients in the mountains of rural Jamaica, third-year Feinberg student Tamika E. Smith has spent the last five years on a good-will mission. She shows no signs of letting up.

That do-it-all, do-it-well philosophy earned her the 2008 Herbert W. Nickens Medical Student Scholarship, a $5,000 Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) award given to outstanding third-year medical students who have demonstrated leadership in addressing the educational, societal, and health care needs of minorities.

As a Northwestern undergraduate, Smith founded HALO, the HIV/AIDS Literary Organization. The group helps to increase AIDS awareness and provide volunteers to HIV/AIDS agencies in Evanston and Chicago.

She graduated summa cum laude from Northwestern and moved on to medical school where she carved out the time to help build a Northwestern relationship with a free health clinic in Jamaica, mentor young teens through the Student National Medical Association (SNMA), and teach healthy eating habits to minority residents in a housing development as a volunteer for Chicago Cares, Inc.

Her inspiration, she says, comes from her parents, her Christian upbringing, and a simple premise: “I just feel like you have to get your hands dirty,” says Smith. “If you see a problem, do something, small or large, to fix it.”

She says it helps that she’s a time management fanatic. She puts 100 percent into whatever she’s doing at the moment to ensure that the job gets done. “I consolidate my energy,” says Smith, who also finds time for her husband and their eleven-week-old baby girl.

Smith was particularly impressive when she worked with minority high schoolers as a first- and second-year medical student through the SNMA’s Health Professions Recruitment Exposure Program, said Sunny Gibson, director of the Office of Minority and Cultural Affairs at the Feinberg School. The program works to get Chicago teens excited about science and the medical profession.

“She really related to the students and she represented where they want to be someday,” said Gibson. “Tamika did a phenomenal job organizing the program. A lot of people talk about ideas and vision, but she makes it happen. Not everyone has that ability to follow through.”

Smith was born in Kingston, Jamaica, but moved to Miami when she was just four. The desperate need for health care in the mountains of Jamaica inspired her to help build the NU-AID presence at the Blue Mountain Project in the rural town of Hagley Gap. Medical students from the Feinberg School, as well as medical students from other states and countries, take week-long trips there to provide much needed, free primary care to hundreds of people living near the coffee fields of Jamaica.

Smith says the care has focused on patients with hypertension, diabetes, and infectious diseases as well as the victims of child and domestic abuse. She says it’s clear there is a need for additional services. “We hope to offer wound repair and maternity care in the future.”

Smith isn’t sure what branch of medicine she will choose, but she thinks it will probably be in the primary care field, either as a family physician or pediatrician. “I think that will be a good fit, given my interest in empowering patients, creating strong doctor-patient relationships, continuity of care, and education.”

Share. Facebook Twitter Email

Related Posts

Lurie Cancer Center Receives Merit Extension from NCI

Oct 20, 2021

Drug Combination May Reduce Risk of Leukemia Relapse

Mar 26, 2020

Rewriting the Role of a Transcription Factor

Mar 19, 2020

Comments are closed.

Latest News

Sex-Specific Mechanisms for Major Depressive Disorder Identified in Response to Dysregulated Stress Hormones

Mar 23, 2023

Pre-Surgery Immunotherapy May Increase Survival in Advanced Melanoma

Mar 23, 2023

Hormone Therapy Plus Current Treatments Improves Survival in Prostate Cancer

Mar 22, 2023

How ChatGPT Has, and Will Continue to, Transform Scientific Research

Mar 21, 2023

New Directions for HIV Treatment

Mar 21, 2023
  • News Center Home
  • Categories
  • Press Release
  • Media Coverage
  • Editor’s Picks
  • News Archives
  • About Us
Flickr Photos
20230317_NM651
20230317_NM610
20230317_NM569
20230317_NM537
20230317_NM331
20230317_NM323
20230317_NM316
20230317_NM336
20230317_NM626
20230317_NM662
20230317_NM655
20230317_NM642

Northwestern University logo

Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

RSS Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Flickr YouTube Instagram
Copyright © 2023 Northwestern University
  • Contact Northwestern University
  • Disclaimer
  • Campus Emergency Information
  • Policy Statements

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.