Hailey Jordan’s interest in mental health and the intersection between health and education is both personal and professional. A keen observer of her family and community, she notes high depression rates among African American women and the stigma around mental health issues. Her father, a veteran of Desert Storm was not diagnosed with PTSD until 20 years after returning home. Such systemic racial and ethnic disparities affect families and communities. A first-generation college student at Stanford University, Hailey found an intellectual home in her classes oriented toward public health and used her papers and independent research opportunities to delve into mental health issues.
Now a second-year student in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Hailey is focused on developing the skillset she needs to be an effective advocate and public health practitioner. This summer she won a Yale Presidential Service Fellowship and interned with the Cornell Scott Hill Clinic in New Haven. There, she worked with the medical directors to develop a tool designed to congregate survey metrics to support continuous quality improvement. “It’s really rewarding to see the clinic implementing changes based on this tool,” she says. She will extend this work with the clinic as she evaluates the tool for her thesis project.
One of the things Hailey learned this summer is that the rate of emergency visits in this federally funded clinic is inter-related with mental health issues. The upstream causes are often homelessness, food insecurity and poverty. Many patients with high rates of emergency room visits suffer from poor physical health, have substance abuse and other mental health conditions. The scorecard parses out these underlying issues and can steer the clinic toward better serving the community.