Breaking the cycle: a mission to address intimate partner violence

Sofia R. Perez

Sara Ruiz, a Master of Public Health student at Loyola University Chicago's Parkinson School of Health Sciences and Public Health, was recently awarded the prestigious Schweitzer Fellowship. Her passion for public health, rooted in personal experiences, began in her early years at Loyola.

“I come from a long line of doctors, and health care and medicine had always been on the forefront of my mind,” Sara said. “It didn’t actually change until I was in my freshman year at college.”

After enrolling in Health in America her first year at Loyola, where she learned about public health disparities across the country, Ruiz’s goals began to shift.

“As important as physicians are, I think I wanted my impact to be more than a one-on-one consultation,” Ruiz said. “We need to expand and look to the population. Population health is what determines our health as a nation.”

The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship

Ruiz described her decision to apply for the Schweitzer Fellowship as a leap of faith. The fellowship, an elite program funded by the Health and Medicine Policy and Research Group, selects approximately 20 graduate students every year from multidisciplinary backgrounds. Each fellow has the opportunity to create their own project.

“It’s a project that’s focused on direct service to a population in need,” Ruiz explained. “I thought that it would be an excellent cap to everything I’ve learned in the Parkinson Public Health program.”

Prevention through understanding

Ruiz’s fellowship project will be to create educational programming at Erie Family Health Center that focuses on raising awareness among women, particularly from Latin/x communities, about intimate partner violence. Her project is motivated by some of the women in her life growing up.

“These women were struggling in abusive relationships. Unfortunately, even though this was talked about a lot among the women, nothing was really done about it.” Ruiz added, “There is a lot of violent undercurrent to what we have normalized and accepted as a culture.”

To address this, her project aims to provide women the necessary vocabulary to be able to advocate for themselves. Ruiz is developing workshops under the title “Healthy Relationships,” which will include education with explicit messaging on warning signs and cycles of abuse.

“My idea was that if I work with a primary care clinic, they’re at the best position for prevention,” Ruiz explained. “Give women the tools to advocate for themselves, plan for survival, and maybe just open their minds a little bit to what they should accept in a relationship.”

Courage and ambition

Ruiz credits her mentors at Loyola for helping her along the way, particularly Julie Darnell, PhD, director of the Bachelor of Science in Public Health, who Ruiz describes as someone who “took a chance on me” and has been pivotal in her growth. She also appreciates Daniel Swartzman, JD, MPH, her professor and mentor for the Schweitzer Fellowship, who Ruiz describes as “instrumental in my professional development.”

To students looking for similar fellowship and public health opportunities, Ruiz recommends reaching out to faculty, building good support systems, working hard, and taking advantage of every resource at their disposal. Most of all, she advises students to believe in themselves.

“Take the chance,” Ruiz encourages. “Even though you might be telling yourself ‘no, I’m not qualified enough, I’m not what they’re looking for,’ you really just never know. Why decide that for them? Take the leap of faith, trust yourself.”

As she embarks on her fellowship, Ruiz feels both excited and driven. “I’ve been called to do something huge.”