The Diabetes Education and Wellness (DEW) Clinic is a student-run interdisciplinary clinic that sees diabetic patients from the Detroit community once a month. Recently relocated to the newest Wayne Health building at 400 Mack, the DEW clinic provides patients access to free help from 8 disciplines at WSU. This includes medicine, pharmacy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, dietetics, law, social work, and public health.

Public health students from Dr. Mahas’ FPH 7011 Foundations in Public Health come to the clinic every month to bring the public health input to the DEW Clinic. Public health students ask open ended questions designed to determine the patients' social determinants of health in a conversation rather than an interview. We make connections with the patients and make suggestions on how to start or continue their journey with diabetes. This can include different ways to stay accountable or mentioning resources that are available in their community.

As public health student representative, Catherine Maples coordinates MPH students and attends every clinic to help our MPH students talk with patients and appreciate the inter-disciplinary portion of the clinic. Catherine states, “it is great to have public health represented at the clinic to cement the fact that the social determinants of health play a role in each patient’s diabetes journey. Public health students are able to identify gaps that other disciplines may not think about. At the end of every clinic, all disciplines come together to share their thoughts and ideas about how to best help the patient and public health students are always great at suggesting new and improved ways to help patients.”