Update on Helping the Poor in Coatesville

Hi Everyone:

(That means Maria, Theresa, Michelle, Martha, Yi, Bonnie, and anyone else who visits this blog.)

Maria Ligos and I met last night at the Pen and Pencil Club in Philadelphia to talk about a possible service project in Coatesville. It was a pleasure to finally meet Maria in person. We were joined by Yi _____, whose last name escapes me, a scientist and medical writer doing preclinical research in mice. We were also joined briefly by Joanne Rosenberg, our dedicated chapter president.

As I mentioned in my Dec. 17 post to the AMWA-DVC subgroup on LinkedIn, Joanne told us that the chapter won't be able to support us in any formal fashion, since an outreach project like this doesn't fall within the chapter mission. But she said it sounds like a good idea, and encouraged us to go ahead.

As a first step, I'd like to suggest that we send a letter to Ms. Frances Sheehan, president and CEO of the Brandywine Health Foundation (BHF).

The BHF (net assets of $27 million) sponsored the festive (and fun!) 5K run earlier this month.Here's a photo taken in 2012:

The BHF's primary mission is improving health in the Coatesville area by funding safety net agencies that many residents depend on to stay healthy. Most of its annual revenue comes from earnings on investments, but a substantial sum (approx. $500,000) comes from grants. 


The BHF uses this money to support a wide variety of local health-related agencies operating in Coatesville. For example, in 2013 BHF granted $340,000 to ChesPenn Health Services, $245,000 to Chester County Community Dental Center, $50,000 to Child Guidance Resource Centers, plus many other grants too numerous to mention. (These figures come from the 2013 annual report.)

Essentially, we would send a letter to Ms. Sheehan saying this:

"We are a group of local medical writers with professional skills in a number of areas, including public health, laboratory science, nutrition, and _________ (you would help me fill in the blank). We think what you are doing at BHF is a wonderful thing and we would like to volunteer to help you. One particular area where we may be able to help is in writing and editing grant applications. Please let us know if someone at the BHF would be willing to discuss this idea further, either in person or over the telephone."

Then we would wait to see what happens.

Hopefully, if we keep things simple, we'll be able to get this letter in the mail (or email) before the end of the year.

What I need from you is:

* A sense of whether you are on board with this
* If you are, some information about your skills, abilities, and interests that I can mention in the letter.
* If we need to give ourselves a name (since we are not affiliated with AMWA-DVC) is it OK if we call ourselves the Brandywine Medical Writing Group?

For example, Maria has a particular interest in nutrition and providing fresh produce. I have skills/interests in the area of providing services to cancer survivors, and to bereaved children (death or divorce in the family).

Please weigh in on these topics using the comments feature on this blog. I have tried to make commenting as easy as possible, but if you get annoying messages, please tell me and I will try to remove them.

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Thanks for your interest in helping improve public health in Coatesville, and I hope to hear from you soon!

Don


  P.S. Terry was having trouble commenting, so I removed the moderation feature. Now all comments will be posted directly to the blog, you won't have to wait for me to approve them. (If we get too much spam I will change this.)