What began as a straightforward effort to connect women and children to health care resources ultimately became a defining, yearlong learning experience for two students at the Texas A&M University School of Engineering Medicine (EnMed).
As members of the 2024-25 Albert Schweitzer Fellowship class, EnMed students Rasha Bara and Harini Pennathur, both from the 2027 cohort, spent the past year working to address real-world health challenges through a community-based project, an experience that reshaped their understanding of access, care and problem-solving.
Through the fellowship, Bara and Pennathur launched Project S.H.I.F.A. (Supporting Houston Individuals by Furthering Access), a community-based initiative focused on expanding access to care in Houston. They partnered with Shifa Healthcare and Community Services, a Houston nonprofit that connects women and families in need of consistent care.
Understanding the Need
Their original goal was straightforward: connect women and children at Shifa’s Women’s Center with health care and community resources. But early in their fellowship, conversations with patients revealed a more complex reality.
“We quickly realized that many of the women’s struggles were rooted in systemic barriers holding them back from accessing resources,” Bara said. “Language barriers, employment eligibility, and transportation all directly affected whether health care was even an option.”
That realization marked a turning point in their fellowship year, reshaping not only their project but their understanding of what it takes to improve access to care. Rather than continuing with their original plan, the pair shifted their focus to listening more closely to the women they were serving.
Their organization began by focusing on individualized professional skill building and emotional well-being. However, through continued conversations with the women, they determined that therewas still an unmet need in preventive health care access. Many expressed a strong desire to vaccinate themselves and their children but did not know where to start.
From Insight to Action
Drawing on the engineering mindset emphasized in their coursework, and with guidance from their academic advisor and MRI technologist, Flordeliz Bowles, the pair reframed their project.
They focused on identifying root causes, defining constraints and designing solutions that could operate within real-world systems. That shift in approach ultimately led to the development of a community vaccination clinic, an outcome they had not initially envisioned.
Pennathur and Bara became the first student recipients of a vaccine grant at EnMed from the Texas Medical Association, allowing them to organize and host a free vaccination clinic for uninsured patients in Houston. The clinic provided flu and childhood vaccines to families who otherwise faced significant barriers to preventive care.
“We were incredibly honored to receive the grant, but even more honored to use it to serve our community,” Pennathur expressed. “We are hopeful that this opens the door for future EnMed students to develop similar partnerships and expand EnMed’s impact on community health in Houston.”
To bring the clinic to life, the organization partnered with the Harris County Health Department (HCHD), which supports public health across the county through clinical services, disease preventionand health promotion initiatives. The partnership provided critical expertise and infrastructure, helping the students translate their ideas into a real-world solution.
“The HCHD team had invaluable knowledge in the logistics of vaccine events,” Bara explained. “They shared expertise and resources that helped not only our patients, but our entire team.”
From there, the two mapped out requirements, distinguishing between must-haves, such as vaccine procurement, trained vaccinators, cold storage, and record documentation, and items that were simply nice to have.
Given the complexity of those requirements, partnering with an established public health organization became essential. Working alongside HCHD and Shifa, the pair coordinated vaccine supply and storage, secured a central clinic location, developed outreach strategies for uninsured community members, and built workflows for patient intake, vaccination and observation.
“The week leading up to the event was all about preparation,” Pennathur said. “We recruited and trained volunteers, gathered educational materials, and designed a workflow so that everything would run safely and smoothly.”
On the day of the clinic, the students oversaw operations from start to finish, ensuring patient privacy, managing wait times and adapting in real time, while using skills emphasized in class. The clinic ultimately provided vaccination to uninsured patients ranging from ages 4-78, offering access to care for individuals who may not have otherwise received it.
“We quickly learned that we had to build a roadmap where one didn’t exist,” Bara said. “While we were the first EnMed students to secure this type of grant and run a vaccine clinic, we had strong support from our site mentor, EnMed leadership, and our Albert Schweitzer Fellowship mentors.”
Building a Legacy Project for Future Physicianeers
That support helped transform Project S.H.I.F.A. into a legacy initiative designed to outlast its founders.
“Our experience motivated us to think intentionally about sustainability,” Pennathur said. “That’s what led us to establish Project S.H.I.F.A. as a legacy project for future EnMed students.”
Beyond delivering vaccines, the project served as hands-on training in systems-level medicine. The duo gained experience in grant writing and management, interprofessional collaboration, public health logistics, community engagement and leadership within a real-world environment.
“This wasn’t just about hosting a vaccine event,” Bara said. “It was about understanding community needs and how to design solutions that actually reach people.”
As a new cohort of first-year medical students begins its Albert Schweitzer Fellowship, Bara and Pennathur see their project not as an endpoint, but as part of a larger continuum.
The incoming fellows include Neha Aluru, Rucha Dave, Rachel Kurian, Abhinaya Muruganandham, Shalini Namuduri and Maansi Srinivasan.
They say that their experience showed them that meaningful impact doesn’t always start with the perfect solution but with a willingness to listen, adapt and take action.
