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Innovation Fellow

Marc Freedman Portrait

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SARAH LAFAVE

Board President & Founder, Lori’s Hands, Inc.
Transforming the learning experience of next-generation health care leaders and the lives of their chronically ill patients
“The way we train health care professionals needs to be turned on its head. So much of our health is impacted by what happens in our communities, not what’s happening in the hospital, yet most training happens in clinical environments.”

Sarah LaFave, MPH, RN is a doctoral candidate in the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing and the founder and board president of Lori’s Hands, Inc. 

As a doctoral student and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Future of Nursing Scholar, Sarah’s research and practice focus on assessing, developing and scaling systems-level and community-based strategies to improve health equity. For her dissertation research, Sarah is working with a team to develop a new measure of structural racial discrimination with the goal of better understanding and mitigating the impact of racism and systemic inequities on older adult health.

Sarah co-founded Lori’s Hands as an undergraduate nursing student in 2009. The service-learning organization is named in memory of Sarah’s mom, Lori, who lived with breast cancer for many years and passed away when Sarah and her brother were in high school. Sarah’s family remembers Lori as a humble and caring person who was generous with her time and energy in the small, consistent ways that often matter most. Lori’s Hands honors that legacy by mobilizing college student volunteers to learn from and provide in-home, practical support for people living with chronic illness.

Sarah received her Bachelor of Science in nursing from the University of Delaware College of Health Sciences and her Master of Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is originally from Voorheesville, NY and now lives in Baltimore City with her husband Aron, their dog, Jack, and their cat, Monkey. Sarah is an active volunteer with the Baltimore Neighbors Network and the Baltimore City Health Department.