DEI Activities in Outreach and Engagement

Community Engagement: Partnerships with various community organizations have led to a number of identified DEI opportunities:

  • Columbus Free Clinic – Psychiatry clinic reaching underserved and disenfranchised patient populations in Columbus
  • Working with community partners to expand clinical care and reduce stigma for people with mental illness
  • Community outreach with international communities of Columbus
  • Community psychiatry – Our public and community psychiatry fellowship, directed by Dr. Dale Svendsen and in partnership with Case Western Reserve University, provides opportunity for fellows to target areas of interest such as homelessness, state hospitalization, Veteran affairs, forensics, substance misuse, and other treatment programs in the greater Cleveland

2020-2021 Highlights:

  1. Involvement in OSU Anti-Racism Action Plan – Ruth Barrientos is involved with the Education and Training Team to engage marginalized youth to introduce them to various health science and biomedical research concepts and careers.
  2. Helena Rempala identified her community outreach efforts with international communities in Columbus (conducting healthy sleep workshops with the Polish-American community; participating in discussion panels on cultural minorities in project Poland360.org about experiences of Polish emigrants abroad; offering lectures on behavioral interventions for adult ADHD to South African community counseling center staff)
  3. Rempala (UA IDEA), Moreno (Early College Academy), and Waickman (OSU GME IDEA) identified involvement with engagement with students across various settings regarding interests in neuroscience and mental health
  4. Kasick has been a speaker for the Franklin County Community Intervention and Diversion Program and their Crisis Intervention Training for the Columbus Police Academy
  5. Julie Teater’s team has been performing Narcan distribution in the community since May 2020, and has targeted high-risk zip codes for overdose. The team has distributed over 1000 OSU kits in the last year and aided in the distribution of many more thousands of kits with community partners.
  6. The Trauma Recovery Center’s community outreach and engagement team spends times developing relationships with key community stakeholders to address barriers to Addtionally, the TRC offers training for community members (primarily local barbers/beauticians and members of local churches in BIPOC community) on the impact of ACEs and how to be an effective support to someone struggling with mental health concerns