Encouraging Effective Emergency Management
At the University of Alabama, Logan Fenhouse was very involved with Beyond Bama, an organization that introduces students to community partnership through short-term service-learning trips.
Her first trip was to Baton Rouge in 2016 to provide disaster relief for flood victims. While throwing away residents’ items beyond salvage, she spotted a DVD labeled “Liam’s first birthday.”
“Receiving adequate nutrition, housing, having a purpose in life—there is so much more that goes into health besides visiting a doctor.”
“That really hit me,” she remembers. “I want to make sure that people have the right resources in place so that they don’t lose their legacies, and that it’s done in a sustainable way.”
After graduation, Fenhouse worked as a fellow at Project Horseshoe Farm to support community partners in rural Alabama. She delivered meals to people dealing with food insecurity, managed a housing program for older women facing mental illness, and assisted disaster relief efforts in the wake of a tornado.
Then, as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in the Canary Islands, she volunteered at an emergency women’s shelter for immigrants, an experience that helped her better understand the challenges of unstable housing. Upon her return to the U.S., Fenhouse served as a community health director at a YMCA in the Chicago area, curating and relaunching programs to help members manage chronic diseases and co-leading an emergency housing initiative for asylum seekers.
At the Bloomberg School, Fenhouse plans to focus on humanitarian health to learn about emergency preparedness in low-resource settings. “I want to make sure that whenever people are faced with circumstances that they can’t control, they still have the resources to achieve well-being.”
