Lachlan Forrow, MD, president of the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship

Merck is committed to promoting and participating in partnerships to help build health care capacity and address specific health and development challenges around the world. One example is The Merck Company Foundation's support of the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship Programs, which provide community service fellowships for graduate students in health-related professional fields who are dedicated to addressing unmet health needs in their local areas.

The Fellowships are named after Albert Schweitzer, who at the age of 30 and aware of the desperate medical needs of Africans, decided to become a doctor and devote the rest of his life to direct service in Africa. In 1913, at the age of 38, Dr. Schweitzer and his wife, Hélène, opened a hospital in Lambaréné, Gabon, where he lived and practiced until his death. In his late seventies, Schweitzer was awarded the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize for his work.

Since being launched in 1991, the U.S. Schweitzer Fellows Programs have aimed to carry out Dr. Schweitzer's work to help those in need and have grown to include programs in Baltimore, Bay Area/San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Delaware Valley, New Hampshire/Vermont, North Carolina, and Pittsburgh. The Programs have four overall goals:

• Provide direct services that address health-related needs of underserved communities;
• Influence the professional development of students in health-related fields in ways that strengthen their commitment to, and skills in, public service;
• Alter the culture of professional schools so they more effectively address needs of surrounding disadvantaged communities;
• Support program alumni who continue in lifelong community service and who, as Schweitzer Fellows for Life, are influential role models for other professionals.

The Merck Company Foundation's support began in 2003 with a $150,000 grant for a comprehensive evaluation of the Schweitzer Fellows Programs. In 2006, The Foundation provided a $1 million grant to expand the Fellowship nationally.

Here is a discussion with Dr. Forrow on the value of the partnership between The Merck Company Foundation and the Fellowship.

• Q: What has been the impact of the support the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship Programs have received from The Merck Company Foundation?
• LF: The support has been absolutely essential in the maturation of our programs from “start-ups” to rigorously evaluated, continuously improving programs able to attract sustained funding for the long term. By 2010, we expect to have at least doubled the number of local program sites and will be on track toward at least a doubling of the number of new U.S. Schweitzer Fellows selected and supported each year, from 135 Fellows providing over 27,000 hours of service in 2005-06, to approximately 300 new Fellows each year providing 60,000 hours of service. Through the Fellow's lifelong commitments to service, many underserved individuals and communities in the U.S. will increasingly have dedicated professionals focusing on meeting their needs.
• Q: How has Merck Company Foundation support helped the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship Programs create sustainable solutions that address critical societal needs?
• LF: The Foundation has provided two forms of support that have been invaluable in our efforts to ensure that our U.S. Schweitzer Fellows have major impact on the people they serve in ways that are sustainable. First, the evaluation systems that the first Foundation grant put into place now allows us to obtain regular, rigorous and reliable feedback from all agencies our Fellows serve about the enduring impact of our Fellows’ work. This allows us to share “best practices” across our multiple program sites that provide the basis for steady improvements in how direct service projects are designed and implemented. The second form of support came in the capacity-building dimensions of the Foundation’s second grant, which has provided the financial and human resources we needed to forge long-term collaborations with funding partners that will sustain our programs.
• Q: What is the value to your organization of your partnership with The Merck Company Foundation?
• LF: The Merck Company Foundation has been The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship’s most important partner over the past five years, providing both crucial financial support and also wise guidance. Thanks to the Merck Foundation support, Dr. Schweitzer’s extraordinary legacy of human service is now certain to have increasing and enduring impact on succeeding cohorts of health professionals in training in the U.S., on their lifelong careers, and on the many thousands of underserved individuals they will help.
  
  It is particularly fitting that this vital support for our U.S. Schweitzer Fellows has come from The Merck Company Foundation, given Merck’s special relationship with Dr. Schweitzer going back nearly a century, when he carried a copy of The Merck Manual with him in 1913 on his initial voyage from Europe to Africa to found his Hospital in Lambarene. Today, nearly 100 years later, Merck is playing an even more vital role in supporting those who are bringing Dr. Schweitzer’s legacy of service to underserved individuals and communities in the U.S.