President’s Engagement Prize
The project is a recipient of a 2024 President’s Engagement Prize, a competitive award that empowers Penn undergraduates to design and undertake post-graduation projects that make a positive, lasting difference in the world. Each project will receive $100,000 in implementation costs and each team member gets a $50,000 living stipend for next year. The Presby Addiction Care Program team will be mentored by Jeanmarie Perrone, professor of emergency medicine in Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine and founding director of CAMP.
Brianna Aguilar, Catherine Hood, and Anooshey Ikhlas represent the leadership and conception behind the Addiction CaRE Volunteers (formerly Presby Addiction Care Program), which seeks to improve the experiences of people with substance use disorder during hospitalization.
Aguilar says the five-hour student volunteer training was done in collaboration with Penn’s Center for Addiction Medicine and Policy—whose director is their project mentor, Jeanmarie Perrone—and the SOL Collective, a Kensington-based harm reduction organization.
