The Rev. Pastor Portia Cavitt is not new a new face to the college or UNMC as a whole.
She is a UNMC Community Collaborative Academy and College of Medicine community partner and former winner of the UNMC Community Service to Research Award.
A community advocate based in Omaha, “Pastor P,” as so many lovingly call her, sits on many community councils and boards, including:
- The North Omaha Collective;
- North Omaha Community Care Council;
- North Omaha Area Health (NOAH) Clinic;
- Great Plains Black History Museum;
- and many more.
Rev. Cavitt also is a UNMC colleague, working with medical and health professions students as a standardized patient.
She has been part of UNMC’s community engagement day for first-year medical students since 2019, and she provides education on food security and how to prepare healthy meals. She invites medical students to assist with her church’s gardening plots. (Clair Memorial United Methodist Church, where she is the pastor, also offers produce boxes on the second and fourth Friday each month, and a food pantry every third Saturday, from 10 a.m.- 2 p.m.)
When asked how UNMC, as an organization and medical community, can stay in collaboration with their community partners, she said: “By continuing to build relationships and partnerships that continues to reduce health disparities and assist with funding efforts to do so.”
Read about Rev. Cavitt’s Community Service to Research Award.