$20,000 Provided to Four Students Working to End Hunger
SAN FRANCISCO—August 27, 2020—Healthline.com, the flagship online health information site of Healthline Media, and Feeding America have announced the four winners of the 2020 Healthline & Feeding America Stronger Scholarship Award. The recipients, who will each receive $5,000, are Aseel Elzein of the University of Florida; Thomas Gabel of Pennsylvania State University; Alexander Mancevski of Harvard University; and Carol Ramos-Gerena of the University of Buffalo.
Healthline partnered with leading hunger non-profit Feeding America, whose network of 200 food banks provides food to more than 40 million people, to provide the scholarships so that the recipients can help achieve the company’s vision of a stronger, healthier world.
“These scholarships illustrate Healthline’s commitment to investing in a healthier future by supporting students who will make a difference,” said Healthline Media Senior Vice President of Marketing Tracy Rosecrans. “Partnering with Feeding America enabled us to identify four outstanding individuals with an excellent understanding of the hunger crisis who are working to change the future of food insecurity and nutrition by developing creative solutions.”
“Every day, millions of people do not get the food and nourishment they need,” said Jessica Hager, Director of Healthcare Partnerships & Nutrition at Feeding America. “We work to source and distribute nutritious food and ultimately create a food-secure future. Our partnership with Healthline and involvement in the Stronger Scholarship effort help us deliver on that promise.”
The scholarship winners may use the funds at any accredited U.S. institution. Recipients had to clearly demonstrate that their work, regardless of major or field of study, relates to ending hunger or helping improve nutrition.
This Year’s Stronger Scholarship Winners
Aseel Elzein (Gainesville, FL), a registered dietitian, is pursuing her Doctorate in Nutrition Sciences at the University of Florida. Throughout her studies, Assel's primary goal has been assessing the vulnerabilities of high-risk populations and tailoring specific nutrition interventions. She began this work by looking into the prevalence of college students' food insecurity. Identifying the significant need of this population, she developed and has started testing a multi-pronged plan to implement interventions to promote student food security and decrease the perceived barriers to using the campus food pantry.
Thomas Gabel (Newport, PA) is pursuing a bachelor's degree in Agricultural Education at Pennsylvania State University to become a high school agricultural educator. He is committed to propelling change by building awareness about hunger issues and educating on solutions. While at Penn State, he is already working towards his goals by creating an online program to teach international educators sustainable development goals.
Alexander Mancevski (Austin, TX) differentiated himself because of his long-term devotion to public health and his actions to educate as many kids as possible, starting in high school. In tenth grade, he became the School Health Advisory Council Ambassador for his school district and then founded the Health Through Science Initiative, a program where high school volunteers mentor elementary students in science while promoting joyful, healthful living. He is currently on the pre-med track at Harvard University. As a physician, he plans to inspire communities to prevent illness through healthy living and proper nutrition.
Carol Ramos-Gerena (San Juan, PR) is working towards her Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Buffalo, focusing on Food System Planning. She stood out to both organizations because of her passion, understanding and focus on the Puerto Rican food system's social and environmental injustices. She plans to help transform the system using critical food system education, food system planning, and agroecological scaling as tools.
Healthline partnered with the International Scholarship + Tuition Services (ISTS), an independent third party, to score applications based on a rubric that considered GPA, volunteer hours, community service, extracurricular activities, and responses to essay questions asking how they exemplify Healthline Media’s core values and plan to make positive changes by addressing hunger and/or nutrition. The top 25 applications were then considered by Healthline in partnership with Feeding America, with the top four finalists chosen based on how they demonstrate their commitment to solving a food/nutrition/hunger issue.
Healthline launched the Stronger Scholarship Award in 2017 to give back to its readers and invest in the future by advocating for and supporting exceptional students using education to build a healthier world. Each year the scholarship focuses on a different topic. In past years, topics included diabetes, chronic and rare diseases, and mental illness.
About Healthline Media
San Francisco-based Healthline Media’s mission is to empower people to be their strongest and healthiest selves by being a trusted ally in their pursuit of health and well-being. The company’s properties include Healthline.com, MedicalNewsToday.com and Greatist.com. Healthline Media’s sites provide evidence-based articles with the highest standards of medical integrity that support the modern health consumer with a whole-person approach to health and wellness. Healthline Media is the top ranked health publisher and number 39 on Comscore’s Top 100 Property rankings through January 2020. Across all of its properties, Healthline Media publishes articles authored by more than 120 writers and reviewed by more than 100 doctors, clinicians, dietitians, and other experts. The company’s repository contains more than 70,000 articles, each updated with current protocol. More than 250 million people worldwide and 87 million people in the U.S. visit Healthline’s sites each month, according to data from Google Analytics and Comscore, respectively. Healthline Media is owned by Red Ventures.