Press Release
August 8, 2007
Contact: Genene W. Morris
(973) 972-4564
morrisgw@umdnj.edu
UMDNJ-NJMS First-Year Students Kickoff School
Year with Cares Day Event At Covenant House
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NEWARK — Scores of UMDNJ - New Jersey Medical School students will start off the school year with a trip to Covenant House New Jersey in Newark where they will help repaint the non-profit agency’s gymnasium as part of an annual Cares Day community service event. The event is sponsored by S.H.A.R.E. (Student Health Advocacy for Resource and Education), an NJMS student organization which promotes community outreach.
Cares Day is a service program geared toward incoming NJMS students held each year in August, coinciding with New Student Orientation. For Jen Gillen and Karl Coutinho, NJMS second-year students and S.H.A.R.E. co-directors, Cares Day is a way to help first-year students to established strong ties to the communities that NJMS serves.
“I was surprised about how connected the school was to the community,” Gillen said, recalling her first impressions of the program as a new medical student last year. “Knowing about the lives and environments of our patients will help to make us better doctors.”
Coutinho anticipates this year’s Cares Day will leave a lasting impression on both the students and the residents of Covenant House.
“Covenant House caters to individuals near our age group so we are like peers. We can relate to each other on this level,” Coutinho said, adding “Even a few hours of involvement can have a meaningful and powerful impact on our lives.”
The Covenant House is the largest provider in New Jersey of services to homeless and at-risk adolescents between the ages of 16 and 21.
The CARES day event will run from 11a.m. to 4 p.m. on Thursday, August 9, at Covenant House, 330 Washington Street, Newark. For more information about the event can be found by calling SHARE director Karl Coutinho at 609-721-1340.
Members of the press may contact Genene Morris at 973-972-4564 for more information.
UMDNJ is the nation's largest free-standing public health sciences university with more than 5,700 students attending the state's three medical schools, its only dental school, a graduate school of biomedical sciences, a school of health related professions, a school of nursing and its only school of public health, on five campuses. Last year, there were more than two million patient visits to UMDNJ facilities and faculty at campuses in Newark, New Brunswick/Piscataway, Scotch Plains, Camden and Stratford. UMDNJ operates University Hospital, a Level I Trauma Center in Newark, and University Behavioral HealthCare, a mental health and addiction services network.
