(DePaul University/Randall Spriggs)This summer, Nicholas Cooper, a graduate student in the School of Nursing received the Health and Medicine Policy Research Group’s distinguished Schweitzer Fellowship. The fellowship is a year-long service-learning program that helps fellows design and implement innovative projects to address the health needs of underserved Chicago communities. 
Cooper will use his Schweitzer Fellowship to support transgender youth, a group that has been historically underserved and overlooked by the medical community. He will work with the Lurie Children’s Gender Development Program to help create gender affirming healthcare systems that extend across a person’s lifespan.
Named in honor of famed humanitarian and Nobel laureate Albert Schweitzer, the program encourages students to become lifelong leaders who are poised to address the unmet health needs of Chicagoland’s most vulnerable residents. Each fellow will collaborate with existing community organizations and dedicate 200 hours of service to creating a community-based project.
For 25 years, the Schweitzer Fellowship has provided a platform for graduate students in health-related fields to design and implement innovative projects that improve the health and well-being of underserved populations throughout Chicago. This nationally recognized service-learning program has provided more than 120,000 hours of community service to more than 150 community organizations and has had a lasting impact on the Chicagoland community.