MSU medical college’s UP campus students receive Helping Hands Grant

Students at the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine’s Upper Peninsula campus have received an American Psychiatric Foundation grant for their postpartum depression and screening support program.

The $3,750 Helping Hands Grant is for community mental health service projects that are initiated and managed by medical students.

The grant will help establish the Upper Peninsula Maternal Emotional Support Program, a program that will implement a network of PPD risk assessment screening opportunities, professional education curriculums and integrated community outreach efforts for new mothers in the UP.

The goals of the program are:

• to establish a consistent risk assessment screening program for PPD at Marquette General Hospital,
• educate health professionals in the use of PPD screening tools, and
• to provide outreach and community resources to at-risk mothers to reach more than 2,000 patients, physicians and staff.

“The students saw a need, worked to identify its scope, rallied support and provided a major step forward in addressing this issue,” said David Luoma, MD, MSU College of Human Medicine community assistant dean and CEO of the Upper Peninsula Health Education Corporation (UPHEC).

UPHEC is one of six communities in which the College of Human Medicine trains third- and fourth-year medical students.

The other campuses are located in Grand Rapids, Lansing, Saginaw, Flint and Kalamazoo.

For additional information, visit the Web at http://www.mgh.org/uphec/ or http://humanmedicine.msu.edu/.