When Sarah LaFave founded Lori’s Hands at the University of Delaware 11 years ago, she dreamed the service-learning organization that pairs student volunteers with older adults in the community would one day grow beyond the Newark campus.

That dream is now reality.  

During the fall of 2020, Lori’s Hands opened a chapter in Baltimore, Md., thanks to a $212,000 federal grant from the Community Care Corps, a national program created to encourage volunteers to help older adults, people with disabilities and family caregivers avoid isolation and live independently. Student volunteers from Johns Hopkins University and other partners are helping Baltimoreans living with chronic illnesses while also gaining experience as future healthcare professionals. 

Plans are underway to develop a third chapter, this one at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Mich. The Michigan Health Endowment Fund awarded a $100,000 planning grant to Lori’s Hands and Eastern Michigan University to plan the development of the new chapter in the Detroit area.

“There have been opportunities many times over the years to haphazardly start a chapter in another city with partners who are interested. We really felt that to expand in an area, we would need to have both a committed university partner and a funding source to make that expansion possible,” said LaFave, now a doctoral student in the John Hopkins University School of Nursing. “It just feels like we made the right decision by waiting and going a little bit slower so that we could have the right people to work with.”

Making a connection

The expansion led Lori’s Hands to hire its second full-time employee, Tiaira Harris, who serves as senior program manager for the Baltimore chapter. She joins Maggie Ratnayake, who is the program director for Lori’s Hands.

“I think it’s a perfect fit. Baltimore has a lot of health challenges and health disparities as well. Also, we have tons of pre-health professional students who are eager for this opportunity,” said Liz Bonomo, co-founder of Lori’s Hands and a member of the organization’s board of directors. “We’re excited to see what’s similar and see what’s different. “

Baltimore is in the midst of a renaissance in social innovation, Harris said, and Lori’s Hands’ expansion to Charm City offers great potential for outreach and partnerships while also reflecting the diversity of its residents. 

“I spent the last ten years working at an organization that had been around for quite a long time. This is a new experience for me and allows me room for creativity to really build a chapter that is unique to Baltimore but holds the integrity and values of Lori's Hands,” Harris added. “We will work to make Lori’s Hands a staple in the Baltimore area.” 

Lori’s Hands aims to help students understand more about community health by developing relationships with individuals who live with chronic illnesses. Students help with housework, meal preparation, grocery shopping and other household activities. Clients are referred to the program from home health agencies, healthcare providers and other community organizations. In a typical year, the program in Newark usually has about 350 student volunteers and 150 clients.

Although other organizations connect volunteers and older residents, Lori’s Hands adds a twist — clients are asked to help educate these next-generation health leaders about what it’s like to live with a chronic illness and aging in place. As a result, students and clients both give and take from the program.

“It's just a really unique model that both parties are benefiting. It's not just a learning experience, but it's really capitalizing on each group’s strengths in order to benefit the others’ needs,” Ratnayake said.

A view of the future

For students who are pursuing a career in healthcare, it’s important to develop an understanding of how issues like social determinants of health can provide a needed context for people’s health beyond their clinical presentation, LaFave said. Lori’s Hands gives students an opportunity to learn that firsthand.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted changes to the way Lori’s Hands’ program operates, it has also opened some possibilities for different kinds of interactions between students and clients, such as touchless grocery shopping, virtual visits and pen pals.

As Lori’s Hands expands beyond Newark, there are opportunities to tailor the Lori’s Hand model and curriculum to the other university partners. Eastern Michigan University has a School of Social Work, which includes a field placement for students. Ratnayake said the planning grant will focus in part on how the Lori’s Hands chapter can use the connections already in place in Michigan to benefit students and clients there.

Collaborations between chapters also are likely. “We can bring in social work students from Michigan and they can work together with nursing students and health science students at the University of Delaware and nursing students from Johns Hopkins,” Ratnayake said. “We’re excited about the opportunity to continue to promote learning and interaction across disciplines between students from different schools and regions.”

Rooted in Newark, but branching out

LaFave said Lori’s Hands’ strong roots in Newark helped create a strong foundation making expansion possible. Collaborations, such as with the Center for Research in Education and Social Policy (CRESP), have provided needed outcomes evaluation that have helped Lori’s Hands secure additional funding, including through ChristianaCare.

Jillian Graves, an assistant professor at Eastern Michigan University, said the success of Lori’s Hands in Newark offers great promise for expansion. “Our school is really interested in working with people in the community and I think that with their expertise - along with our commitment to our students - we can come up with a really fruitful partnership,” she said.

Keith Chan, assistant professor at Hunter College, part of the City University of New York, is joining Lori’s Hands to look at data management and evaluation. He hopes to examine outcomes related to caregivers and students while looking at topics like food insecurity, isolation and mental health issues.

“I feel really fortunate to be part of the team,” said Chan, who is also a gerontologist. “I think a model like Lori’s Hands can be a critical piece in the solution in servicing older adults.”

Lori’s Hands is named after LaFave’s mother, who died of cancer when LaFave was a freshman in high school. Bonomo and LaFave, who was recently named a 2020 Gen2Gen Innovation Fellow, founded Lori’s Hands in the living room of their college apartment with their three roommates and LaFave’s classmates in the School of Nursing as a way to honor Lori LaFave’s commitment to helping others.

“What’s so exciting for me is hearing about the personal relationships that develop between students and clients. We couldn’t picture other people getting as excited about it as we did,” said Bonomo, who lives in Baltimore and is helping with the new chapter. “Now, there’s so many relationships between students and clients. It’s almost become like a second family. These are students who are so many degrees separated from the beginning of the organization and from the origins in our living room.”