Petit fellowship expands year-round

Program in memory of 17-year-old grants more opportunities for women pursuing science careers

Twelve years after 17-year-old Hayley Petit’s death, a fellowship in her name is expanding to create more opportunities for women pursuing careers in science.

Recipients of the Hayley Petit Injury and Violence Prevention Fellowship create research protocols and shadow health professionals during the five-week program every summer. Starting this year, the program will also accept two fellows in the fall and two in the spring, Connecticut Children’s Medical Center announced in a recent press release. A grant from the nonprofit Petit Family Foundation funds the program.

The fellowship will last the entire fall and spring semesters and could include academic credit in addition to the existing $1,000 stipend, said Garry Lapidus, a physician assistant and the director of the Connecticut Children’s Injury Prevention Center.

After four successful years of the fellowship, the prevention center pitched the expansion to the Petit Family Foundation last year and “they embraced it,” Lapidus said.

Charity born from tragedy

Hayley Petit was the elder daughter of physician and state Rep. William Petit, R-Plainville, and she wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps and become a doctor. Her dream never came true. Hayley, her 11-year-old sister, Michaela, and their mother, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, were murdered in their Cheshire home in July 2007. William Petit was the sole survivor of the attack. Hayley was set to attend her father’s alma mater, Dartmouth College, that fall to study biology.

The Petit Family Foundation formed within weeks of the Petit women’s deaths, with the goal of continuing “the kindness, idealism and activism that defined their lives,” according to the mission statement. The foundation directs its funds toward three areas: supporting efforts to protect and help those affected by violence, improving the lives of those affected by chronic illnesses, and fostering the education of young people, especially women in the sciences. It has since provided millions in grant money for anti-violence initiatives, especially in support of domestic violence victims. It has also provided scholarships for Connecticut students in need, donated to several hospitals and funded science programs in schools.

But “one of the favorite things” the foundation has brought about is the fellowship in Hayley’s name, which accomplishes all three funding goals, William Petit said.

The growth of the fellowship

The program was Lapidus’ idea. He and Petit got to know each other through Men Make a Difference, a coalition of Connecticut men against domestic violence, co-founded by Interval House and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal. Lapidus suggested that the Petit Family Foundation create a program for “highly motivated young women” to learn about the prevention of all kinds

of violence, Petit said.

He loved the idea, especially when Lapidus suggested naming the program after Hayley, and she would love it too, Petit said.

“She cared a lot about people,” he said. “The girls in her class really looked up to her (and) she tried to protect the underdog all the time.”

The first Hayley Petit fellows, in 2014, were two female high school students, but the applicant pool changed the following year to women who are pursuing or recently obtained science degrees at a college or university.

Fellows in 2014 and 2015 developed community education projects that matched their interests, according to press releases from those years. Now, the fellows develop their own research proposals for an injury area of their choosing and spend several days shadowing medical professionals.

The fellowship expanded last year to include two additional fellows based in the Connecticut Children’s Emergency Department as well as the Injury Prevention Center. One of those fellows, Leianna Dolce, a Haddam native and University of Vermont neuroscience student, developed a research protocol to survey teenagers about the potential impact of “13 Reasons Why,” a Netflix series about a teen girl’s suicide. The Institutional Review Board approved Dolce’s study, and it will likely be implemented this summer in the emergency department, Lapidus said.

A 2017 study by the National Institute of Mental

Health showed a relationship between the release of “13 Reasons Why” and an increase in youth suicide rates shortly afterward.

Sufficient financial resources and a wealth of qualified applicants led to last year’s expansion of the fellowship, Lapidus said, and it could come back in the future.

The Petit Family Foundation aims to continue expanding the fellowship over time, but requests for money “have gone up astronomically” over the years, and the nonprofit needs to fulfill existing grant commitments first, Petit said.

“We used to have a few more requests than we had money,” he said. “Now we have tenfold the requests.”

Education and inspiration

Injury Prevention Center experts teach the Hayley Petit fellows about the public health science behind the existence and prevention of injuries and violence, Lapidus said. They also introduce the fellows to research methods and design for the creation and presentation of their proposals, he said.

Domestic violence, teen driving safety, youth suicide, and elderly fall prevention are some of the center’s focus areas, according to the Connecticut Children’s website. The fellowship also covers homicide and child abuse and neglect. All these things are “predictable and largely preventable,” Lapidus said.

This summer’s fellows are Pranally Desai of Farmington, Callista Love of Bolton, Sydney Osborne of NewHaven and Liz Tavares of Holyoke, Mass. Desai, Love and Osborne all attend the University of Connecticut. Tavares graduated from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

Osborne is studying allied health sciences, Tavares has degrees in psychology and neuroscience, and both want to be physician assistants. Desai and Love are both studying physiology and neurobiology and plan to go to medical school.

Learning about the injury prevention area of the medical field has been “eyeopening” because it isn’t widely known, Desai said.

“It’s impacted our lives, every single one of us, but we don’t necessarily know that,” she said.

Many Injury Prevention Center staff have master’s degrees in public health, and Osborne said she is considering pursuing one after learning about their work. Tavares noted that those with public health degrees come from several different health education backgrounds and can offer a variety of perspectives to help address injuries and violence.

The fellows have not yet chosen their areas of interest for their research protocols but have already started shadowing medical professionals at Connecticut Children’s.

They also got to sit in on the weekly Injury Prevention staff meeting Wednesday morning.

Even with a few weeks left in the fellowship, the group has “already become pretty energized” to take forward what they’ve learned, Love said.

One of the Petit Family Foundation’s goals is to be the change that Hayley, her sister and their mother wanted to see in the world. Part of that is to make sure that awareness of violence in the world does not turn into acceptance, Desai said.

“This (fellowship) is giving us the tools and the knowledge that we need in order to do something about it,” she said.