Scrub Life Cares is proud to announce that three team members have been selected for the
2026–27 Black Futures Policy Institute Fellowship
, an initiative of Black Futures Lab focused on strengthening policy, advocacy, leadership, and organizing capacity in support of Black communities.
Representing Scrub Life Cares in the fellowship are Founder and CEO Tanya Ambrose, Shaterica Neal, a political social worker and grassroots community organizer, and Kennedi Outland, a public health professional and Scrub Life Cares intern.
The team was selected following a competitive application process. After submitting its policy proposal and organizational materials, the Scrub Life Cares team advanced to the interview stage, where members met with Black Futures Policy Institute leadership to discuss their policy goals, organizational capacity, and readiness for the fellowship. Following that process, the team was officially selected for the 2026–27 cohort.
Scrub Life Cares will serve as the Sponsoring Organization for the fellowship team, providing the organizational support and structure needed for the fellows to participate fully in the Institute’s year-long training, mentorship, policy development, and campaign-building activities.
“This is an exciting milestone for Scrub Life Cares because it reflects the direction our work has been moving for some time,” said Ambrose. “We have spent years working directly with communities, providing education and resources, conducting research, and listening closely to the barriers people continue to face. This fellowship gives us the opportunity to build the policy skills needed to address those barriers at a deeper, systems level.”
Through the fellowship, the team will strengthen its skills in areas including legislative strategy, coalition-building, power mapping, policy advocacy, campaign development, and leadership.
A major area of the team’s policy work is connected to South Carolina, where Scrub Life Cares has provided menstrual health education and resources in underserved communities and has increasingly examined how school policies shape access to menstrual products and accurate health education.
In 2025, Scrub Life Cares signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Georgia State University’s School of Public Health and welcomed its first cohort of public health interns through the university’s Applied Practice Experience programme. One of those interns, Kennedi Outland, became instrumental in helping the organization deepen its research and policy work.
In 2026, that partnership supported the development of a policy analysis examining menstrual education and equity in South Carolina schools. The project helped Scrub Life Cares connect years of direct-service experience with formal public health research and policy development, strengthening the organization’s ability to move from identifying community-level gaps to exploring systems-level solutions.
The policy proposal brought forward to the Black Futures Policy Institute focuses on strengthening menstrual product access and advancing more consistent, age-appropriate menstrual health education in schools, with particular attention to rural, under-resourced, and majority-Black communities.
For Scrub Life Cares, the fellowship represents more than one policy project. It is also an opportunity to strengthen the organization’s long-term capacity to participate more effectively in policy conversations and systems-level advocacy.
“As public health practitioners, we understand that many of the challenges we respond to at the community level are shaped by policy,” Ambrose said. “Whether we are talking about menstrual health, reproductive health, maternal health, youth wellbeing, education, or safeguarding, the systems around people matter. We want to be able to serve communities today while also helping to shape the policies that affect their health and wellbeing tomorrow.”
The milestone also reflects Scrub Life Cares’ growing footprint across both the United States and the Caribbean. In Antigua and Barbuda, the organization continues to expand its work through school and community health education, menstrual health programming, the annual
Grow With The Flo Health Expo
, youth-centered initiatives, product distribution, partnerships, research, and advocacy.
Ambrose said the fellowship represents a natural progression in both her public health journey and the evolution of Scrub Life Cares.
“Our work has always started with community,” she said. “But over time, it has become increasingly clear that direct service alone cannot change the systems that continue to create the same gaps. Community work showed us the problem, research helped us better understand it, and now we are building the policy knowledge and strategy needed to help create lasting change.”
For Scrub Life Cares, the selection reflects a clear next step in its growth:
From direct service, to research, to policy, to systems change.
This article was originally published by Antigua News Room. Read the original article here: Scrub Life Cares Team Selected for 2026–27 Black Futures Policy Institute Fellowship.