Sofia Espinoza ’24 was honored with the 2024 Engagement Scholarship Consortium (ESC) Excellence in Student Community Engagement Award during the consortium in Oregon earlier this month. This accolade recognizes her exemplary leadership in Lehigh’s Impact Fellowship program.
In addition, 12 other Lehigh students and five professors and faculty members also participated in the consortium, presenting at several sessions on Oct. 9-10.
ESC is a nonprofit educational organization that brings together faculty, staff, students and community partners from higher education institutions internationally to share and discuss community-engaged scholarship. Lehigh joined the consortium in July.
Espinoza, who graduated with a major in population health and minors in environmental studies and Spanish, was an inaugural member of the Global Social Impact Fellowship (GSIF) project "AI Strengthening Healthcare Access (AISHA)" in 2023. In this project, the team utilized Amazon Alexa devices and generative AI to support Sierra Leone’s underfunded healthcare system, which struggles with a severe scarcity of trained professionals and a dual burden of diseases. During fieldwork in Sierra Leone in 2023, Espinoza and her team developed a health education system that includes AISHA Answers and AISHA Lessons. These components provide essential health information and training to clinic staff, enhancing the efficiency of medical treatments and ensuring adherence to standard healthcare protocols, which is particularly beneficial for communities with low literacy rates.
From her very first year on campus, Espinoza demonstrated a passion for health education and communication. Prior to her involvement with the GSIF, she was a Lehigh Valley Social Impact Fellow in 2022, working on the MindFull project. MindFull aimed to enhance access to mental health care by facilitating better connections with peer support networks and community resources throughout the Lehigh Valley.
Initially, entering the job market was challenging as all positions of interest required a master's degree. However, a reassuring conversation with Khanjan Mehta, the vice provost for Creative Inquiry, dispelled her doubts and encouraged her to aim for top graduate schools. Subsequently, Espinoza was accepted into four programs and chose to join the nation's top-ranked public health program at Johns Hopkins University. There, she has been honored with two institutional scholarships: the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health MSPH Scholarship and the Master’s Tuition Scholarship.
“I just want to continue the work that I started at Lehigh,” Espinoza said during the ESC conference. In accepting her award, she underscored the importance of collaboration.
“This award is not just a recognition of the work I’ve done; it’s a testament to the power of collaboration, and the meaningful relationships that come from community engagement.
“These relationships will continue to shape who I am, and will continue to guide me in my future research at Johns Hopkins,” she said.
Story by Haidan Hu
