2025 Albert Schweitzer Fellows Announced

Four UTHealth Houston School of Public Health students have been selected as 2025 Albert Schweitzer Fellows. Congratulations to the 2025-2026 Albert Schweitzer fellows from the School of Public Health: 

• Mary Chen
• Deborah Babalola
• Meghana Nadella
• Alonzo Needum

 
The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship aims to cultivate young leaders and foster development through mentorship to address underserved communities' health needs. Fellows will gain hands-on skills while designing service projects to improve the health of the populations they serve. Students can explore their interests in public health while being paired with community partners to further develop and deploy impactful public health practices. Through the Schweitzer Fellowship, each student will develop a service project designed to uplift their respective communities. Through planning, research, and implementation, fellows create inventive initiatives and solutions aligned with their passions to address the public health needs of their communities. This cohort of service leaders reinforces the declining healthcare workforce predicted to plague the sector and our nation's health for decades. 

Mary Chen 

For Mary Chen, public health represents an academic field where she can enlist advocacy for her future patients as a physician. Chen decided to pursue an MD/MPH after spending a year volunteering at a shelter for unhoused, newly arrived immigrants, which left a lasting impact on her. "After witnessing the language, education, and financial barriers this population faces in the healthcare system, I became strongly interested in advocating for patients with low health literacy and empowering them to navigate the healthcare system and make informed health decisions," Chen stated. 

Through the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship, Chen plans to implement solutions and tackle health literacy at a systemic level to ensure adept communication. Students like Chen seek opportunities to apply passion to patient outcomes, a driving purpose behind her community project. 

"My fellowship project with Casa Juan Diego's Community Health Clinic aims to build capacity and address gaps in healthcare access through recruiting volunteers, providing resource navigation support, and promoting health education in Spanish." 

Meghana Nadella 

As a dual-degree MD/MPH student, Meghana Nadella seeks a future in medicine that combines preventative measures with medicine. For Nadella, a career in Obstetrics and Gynecology holds the potential to combine these two practices, and is eager to work in maternal health. 

This opportunity as a fellow offers unique hands-on experience for students, allowing them to collaborate and seek out community projects dear to their interests. "I am incredibly honored to be selected for this fellowship and grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with passionate, service-driven peers," she shared. "I'm excited to learn from others, build a sustainable public health intervention, and contribute to a community that prioritizes creativity, and compassion." 
During this next academic year, Nadella will work alongside fellows to develop project BLOOM (Bridging Learning, Outreach, and Opportunity for Mothers), a maternal health education and resource navigation program serving pregnant and postpartum individuals across Houston.

  
"We aim to translate health education into actionable steps - empowering participants to access , navigate, and utilize community-based resources that support their well-being in the perinatal period." 

Alonzo Needum

Alonzo Needum, a first-year MD/MPH student at Baylor College of Medicine, uses his lived experiences as a thread to intertwine his past and future as a physician.

"My experiences as a first-generation Afro-Latino have made me deeply aware of how social determinants shape health outcomes, and how public health practices can equip me with the tools to confront these disparities through data and community-driven interventions," Needum said.  

By weaving together experience and medicine, Needum will explore the impact of communication and expression. Without these principles, experience can be a solitary practice, but by bringing together a community, it has the potential to create meaningful conversations and perspectives. 

"With the support of the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship, I am launching a creative healing project for LGBTQ+ youth experiencing homelessness in partnership with Covenant House Texas. The initiative will integrate artistic expression — such as quilt-making or mural design — with culturally tailored health education sessions by combining creativity with empowerment.” Needum hopes this project will foster community, self-advocacy, and improve well-being while offering a therapeutic outlet for processing trauma and reclaiming identity.