Scarsdale's Ellen Kourakos Granted Prestigious Fellowship

Ellen Kourakos, Scarsdale High School Class of 2008, is a recipient of the prestigious Health for America Fellowship. As part of a team of four Fellows, Ellen was chosen from a national pool of applicants that included alumni of Brown, Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Cornell, MIT, Stanford, and dozens of other universities across the country.

The Health for America Fellowship is the first program of its kind, granting young leaders from diverse academic backgrounds the opportunity to delve deeply into real-world healthcare needs. In an innovative partnership with Discover Bank, Christiana Care Health System, Start It Up Delaware, and the Delaware Community Foundation, the 2014-15 HFA Fellows will work together over the course of one year to create and implement a health solution to advance patient care. Fellows will meet with physicians, thought leaders, and community members to identify areas that need the most improvement, specifically within the treatment of chronic heart failure.

Ellen was selected based on her background in Manufacturing and Design Engineering, her broad experience with human-centered design, and her passion for improving the lives of patients.

While an undergraduate student at Northwestern, Ellen participated in the Global Engagement Summit. She was honored with the EDC Design Award, studied abroad in Copenhagen, and interned with Product and Design Metalwork in Brooklyn following her sophomore year. As a research assistant at Northwestern in 2011, Ellen tested polymers to determine the effects of pulverization on oxygen permeability. She also interned at Heathrow Scientific, where she helped to conceive and then manufacture a safety component.

Since graduating two years ago, Ellen has worked for CareFusion in Vernon Hills, IL as a Research and Development Engineer and Project Leader. Her position enables her to develop and improve medical devices, specifically surgical tools for minimally invasive procedures. She has helped to expand the spine portfolio by four catalog codes, and her work focuses on the healing of vertebral compression fractures. Ellen is also a Board Member of the company's Women's Initiative Network, where she helps initiate and lead corporate events to empower women through mentorship, networking, and community service.

Through Big Brothers Big Sisters of Chicago, Ellen has volunteered her time providing educational support to children. She is also the co-founder and facilitator of the Chicago chapter of OpenIDEO, in which she guides a community team through social impact challenges.

As a Health for America Fellow, Ellen will have the opportunity to conceptualize and actualize health technology solutions. The three Fellows who will be working as Ellen's teammates are millennials Nick Azpiroz, Sandra Hwang, and Megan Caldwell.

Health for America promotes innovation by granting fellowships to young leaders from diverse academic backgrounds. The 2014 Health for America Fellowship is carefully structured to use the principles of entrepreneurship and human-centered design to produce the greatest possible impact on the health of communities.

The four Fellows were selected for their leadership in design, technology, entrepreneurship, and community service, and will work together over the course of one year to create and implement a health solution.

"The Health for America Fellowship provides a platform to become submerged in all aspects of the healthcare industry," says Ellen. "I am hungry for an environment that promotes and fosters creative thinking through the design process, and I believe there is no industry more in need of such a radical change than healthcare."

More about the Health for America Fellowship:

Health for America uses America's greatest strength – entrepreneurship — to address its greatest challenge – health. By granting fellowships to recent college graduates from diverse academic backgrounds, Health for America catalyzes the creation of innovative solutions to improve the health of communities while shaping the next generation of leaders. Learn more at www.healthforamerica.org.

This class of Fellows serve as the initial project for the Start It Up Delaware Social Impact Fund established by the Delaware Community Foundation to fund entrepreneurial activities of nonprofits that desire to engage in activities that create economic value to their organizations so that they may continue to meet the needs of the underserved Delaware community, as well as potentially create commercially viable products and solutions.

The Health for America Fellowship is the first program of its kind, granting young leaders from diverse academic backgrounds the opportunity to delve deeply into real-world healthcare needs.
Fellows will meet with physicians, thought leaders, and community members to identify areas that need the most improvement, specifically within the treatment of chronic heart failure. Broadly defined as the heart's inability to maintain sufficient blood flow, heart failure contributes to 1 in 9 deaths in the United States and accounts for over one million admissions to the hospital each year.

Instead of funding a predetermined health solution, HFA and its partners are flipping the typical model of investment: the fellowship funds individuals who have proven to be leaders in their communities and asks them to work full-time to develop a deep understanding of the problem. Fellows are then given the time and resources to develop a specific, high impact solution that will improve outcomes and lower costs.

"We are excited to work with Health for America, our community partners and an enthusiastic group of Fellows who will bring new and fresh ideas to health care," said Patrick Grusenmeyer, Sc.D., FACHE, president of Christiana Care Health Initiatives, which explores creative solutions to improve patient care. "We look forward to developing innovative technological solutions to add greater quality and value and advance the care of patients who suffer from heart failure."

In addition to working in Delaware, Fellows will also travel across the country to attend heart failure conferences, study design thinking, and meet with startup founders. They will work each day to build a solution that is effective, sustainable, and commercially viable, recording their experiences along the way. Fellows will share all of their findings with program partners in Delaware so that patients may benefit for years to come.

"Health for America is the perfect partner and initial recipient of the project funding for the Start It Up Delaware Social Impact Fund, which aims to meet the needs of the underserved members of the Delaware community," said Start It Up Delaware co-founder and chairman, Jon Brilliant.