Students Shadow Medical Professionals in New Jersey’s Corrections System
The Justice Health Summer Program, in which students gather data and propose solutions, is a collaboration between multiple Rutgers institutions and the state
Prabhjit Sandhu, a Rutgers University-New Brunswick sophomore attending the Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy, was looking for something meaningful to do over the summer.
Devising a project to educate inmates on ways to improve their nutrition and fend off diabetes fit the bill.
Sandhu was one of seven Rutgers students who took part in this year’s Justice Health Summer Program, a 10-week experience in which participants learn from health care providers and other medical professionals in the New Jersey correctional system. The summer program includes on-site shadowing with physicians, mental health providers and others as well as developing and implementing a health education project. First-year students meet with these mentors to gather data, target a health issue and propose a means to address it.
The Bordentown Township, N.J., resident learned about the program through the Rutgers Handshake website a friend sent him about various summer opportunities for students. The Justice Health Summer Program was the 19-year-old’s first choice.
“It was mostly due to it being health care-based, and since I am a pharmacy major, that's why,” said Sandhu. “Usually, most pharmacy majors do pharmacy tech jobs or work in a hospital. I wanted to do something that was different.”
Founded in 2019 by Mansi Shah, a university alum and former Institute for Women's Leadership Scholar who attended the Honors College of Rutgers-New Brunswick, the Justice Health Summer Program initially involved a partnership between University Correctional Health Care and the Honors College. The partnership transitioned to University Correctional Health Care and the Innovation, Design, and Entrepreneurship Academy (IDEA) once the program expanded to include more majors and students outside of the Honors College.
IDEA operates a program for first-year students in which undergraduates contribute to interdisciplinary projects focused on finding solutions to societal challenges. Since the summer of 2022, students join the Justice Health program through IDEA, which provides other summer programs. (Other partnerships include a neighborhood revitalization program with Unity Square Community Center and supporting the Mexican American immigrant community in New Brunswick with Lazos America Unida.)
“The idea is that we want them to do a minimum of one shadowing experience or as many as feasible,” said Veronica Armour, the director of IDEA. “Obviously, given that we're dealing with the New Jersey prison system, when planning visits, we are mindful of both needs of the students and prison community.”
Under the Justice Health program, students are assigned mentors with University Correctional Health Care to gather and analyze data about inmates – in Sandhu’s case, reviewing medicine billing records with one of his mentors, a clinical pharmacist. Students target a health issue and propose a means to address it.
“It's basically built for first-year students to really get exposure ... to design and research ... and to give them an applied experience to ... help them on their journey of deciding what they want to do with their lives,” said Nicole Mendoza, a doctoral student in School of Communication, studying mental health and patient provider communication. She also was a lead graduate research specialist at IDEA during the summer program for the Justice Health and Lazos teams.
It's important to have a project where you can actually shadow and actually see for yourself what it's like in a correctional facility rather than reading literature or seeing what the media has to say because it provides a completely different point of view.
Prabhjit Sandhu
Sophomore attending the Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy
Initially, the program drew premedical students, but it has expanded to include undergraduates in other schools at Rutgers, said Arthur Brewer, the statewide medical director of University Correctional Health Care, which is part of Rutgers University Behavioral Health Care.
Students must do readings, write literature reviews and interview Brewer as well as other professionals within University Correctional Health Care “to understand the problems that are going on there. Then they schedule time to go through to visit the prison sites with those mentors, taking time to shadow them on their daily activities or daily work.”
Sandhu and another student in the program worked with and shadowed two mentors: John Manning, a clinical pharmacist at South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton, N.J., and Gregory Dix, the director of pharmacy at University Correctional Health Care.
Dix, who is the director of pharmacy for University Correctional Health Care, “showed me what his day-to-day was, the issues that inmates face currently,” Sandhu said.
The mentor also shared some data on how much the Department of Corrections spends on medicine for inmates every month.
“And a big issue that we noticed was ... antidiabetic medication was more than double than any other medication class,” Sandhu said. “They spent so much money on antidiabetics.”
Sandhu added what they realized about the issue is that “it's mostly diet based – that the diet that many inmates face is high in sodium and high in carbohydrates. And so that's what we decided to make our project based on.”
The solution? Provide education to inmates on healthier ways to prepare meals.
“Our main goal was trying to find a way to help fix the diets that inmates have so that they're less at risk of having these diet-related health issues,” said Sandhu. “We learned that the inmates themselves actually cook the food, but they aren't able to decide what food is made. That's something that the New Jersey Department of Correction decides. And so, looking into this issue more and more, we learned that inmate chefs actually put a high amount of sodium themselves in their food. They want extra seasoning.”
One takeaway for Sandhu was a shift in his perspective.
“It's important to have a project where you can actually shadow and actually see for yourself what it's like in a correctional facility rather than reading literature or seeing what the media has to say because it provides a completely different point of view,” Sandhu said. “Before actually going into the correctional facility, I thought that health care wouldn't be nowhere as good ... and I kind of had a negative mindset before going into the prison, but actually meeting with the staff and seeing how they interact with the inmates themselves, I saw that it's almost quite the opposite, that inmates do receive a lot of great health care. And obviously it's not perfect, but it's a lot better than I expected and what's shown in media.”
Brewer said he hopes the program will encourage students to enter the health care field.
“I hope they really appreciate what it is to provide care here, to see some of the challenges,” Brewer said of students in the program. “I think by having this encounter, you get a real sense of how the U.S. decides to treat vulnerable populations: Groups that are overrepresented in the carceral population. I think it's important no matter what you do.”
