South Side shelter and empowerment organization Margaret’s Village will honor the Pritzker School of Medicine, Andrew Davis, MD, MPH, and Wei Wei Lee, MD, MPH with the Frank and Joan Tobin Service Award at its 50th Anniversary Gala next week in recognition of 30 years of service to the South Side group.
Margaret’s Village, a non-profit organization based in Englewood, operates the Maria Shelter, a haven for homeless women and their children on the South Side that has long been host to the Maria Shelter Health Clinic run by Pritzker Medical Students since the mid-1990s.
Davis, a Professor and Associate Vice-Chair for Quality in the Department of Medicine, graduated from Pritzker in 1980 and began volunteering at the clinic when he returned to University of Chicago in 2000. He eventually began serving as faculty advisor to the clinic and now shares the role with Sonia Oyola, MD.
With Davis’s and Oyola’s guidance and under the supervision of volunteer faculty members, Pritzker students provide direct support to residents of the shelter.
“This arrangement, unique to Margaret’s Village, is exceptional—especially for Englewood,” Margaret’s Village Executive Director Angela Hicks said in a statement. “Our residents must often overcome both physical and emotional traumas, and onsite access to UChicago healthcare services is both reassuring and motivating.”
Davis, who is board certified in internal medicine and preventive medicine, credited students’ leadership for the clinic’s year of success and appreciates the opportunity the clinic provides students to learn about shortcomings in the healthcare system.
“The students do the heavy lifting,” Davis said. “If we can give back in some way to these women and also help students get some clinical experience while learning about how some of the issues in our system impact people, that’s a win.”
Lee, a Professor of Medicine and Associate Dean of Students at Pritzker, directs the student-run free clinic programs at Pritzker and will also be accepting the award on the school’s behalf. Pritzker and UChicago Medicine are joint sponsors of the gala, which will be held at the Union League Club on Wednesday, Oct. 9.
“We are truly honored to receive this award, but more than that we are so grateful for the service of Dr. Davis, Dr. Lee, generous faculty volunteers, and countless Pritzker students over the three decades that led to it,” said Vineet Arora, MD, MAPP, Dean for Medical Education at Pritzker. “Dr. Davis and the Maria Shelter Health Clinic have been a shining example of how we as an institution aim to meaningfully engage and uplift the South Side community.”
At Maria Shelter Health Clinic, medical students have the opportunity as early as their first year to engage members of the South Side community directly while honing clinical skills such as patient interviews, basic vital signs, and presenting cases to attending physicians.
Members of the student-led Executive Board will also attend the gala to represent the clinic. Each year, the board oversees clinic operations, including scheduling volunteer physicians, managing a referrals system, maintaining a stock of medical supplies, and organizing the annual Englewood Health Fair. Students recently led a successful effort to establish a psychiatric clinic at Maria Shelter to provide mental health services to residents.
“Working at the clinic has been the most rewarding part of medical school for me,” said Hannah Taylor, a current student Co-Chair of the Maria Shelter Health Clinic executive board. “Being able to be involved with the community and getting to know people in Englewood, I don’t think I would have had that opportunity had I not worked with this clinic.
“It’s been a real privilege to get to work with the people at the shelter.”
The Maria Shelter Health Clinic is one of six student-run free clinics at Pritzker and one of four on the South Side. Across nearly 150 clinic sessions each year, students see more than 500 patients, and more than 50 UChicago preceptors volunteer to supervise the clinics.
Beyond the free clinics, Pritzker students engage the South Side community through numerous groups including Chicago Street Medicine, the Health Professions Recruitment and Exposure Program (HPREP), Medical Careers Exposure and Emergency Preparedness (MedCEEP), and several school outreach programs. These efforts were a key contributor in the recognition of Pritzker and UChicago Medicine as the 2024 recipient of the Association of American Medical College’s Spencer Foreman Award for Outstanding Community Engagement.