Schweitzer Fellow educating teenagers on domestic violence

Friday, February 21, 2025

Media Contact: Kayley Spielbusch | Digital Communications Specialist | 918-561-5759 | kspielb@okstate.edu

Cali Sweazea hopes to curb domestic violence among teenagers through communication and education.

Sweazea, a second-year medical student at OSU College of Osteopathic Medicine at the Cherokee Nation, is a part of the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship 2024-25 Tulsa cohort, one of 13 chapters in the United States. The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship equips graduate and professional degree students with the commitment and leadership skills required to meet the health care needs of underserved populations.

Schweitzer Fellows identify unmet health care needs in their community and develop and implement projects through community collaborations to address them.

For her project, Sweazea hosts sessions on the Centers for Disease Control’s Dating Matters program at Sequoyah High School in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Dating Matters is designed to raise awareness around and prevent teen dating violence.

“It is geared toward healthy communication and setting boundaries and sticking with them,” Sweazea said. “The program helps teens know themselves, so it is not just in respect to intimate partners. They’ll be able to take the skills they learn and apply them to all their relationships.”

Growing up in the small town of Wetumka, Oklahoma, Sweazea always felt called to pursue medicine. Her mother was a nurse, and she often accompanied her to work during doctor’s appointments. When she was 8 years old, her grandfather passed away from lung cancer, marking the first time she witnessed someone in critical illness.

While attending junior college, she visited her mother at the hospital near campus, where she had the opportunity to meet and converse with her mother’s coworkers.

These experiences sparked her interest in medicine.

“Hospitals were never scary to me. I have always felt like something was leading me to this,” she said. 

The Schweitzer Fellowship provides Sweazea with the opportunity to create a meaningful impact prior to becoming a doctor. Her second-year mentor was also a Schweitzer Fellow and encouraged her to apply.

“She reassured me that everything was going to be fine and told me if I was interested, I should go for it. So, I did and here I am now,” she said.

Sweazea chose to implement Dating Matters because she believes domestic violence in teenagers is an under-discussed issue. She recalled the problems her friends dealt with during high school including age-inappropriate relationships, stalking and verbal abuse, and that they didn’t have access to support or education.

Sweazea said her younger sister and her friends, who were in high school when she was planning her project, told her this kind of program would have been helpful to them.

“The interest is there. It is not that people do not care about the topic,” she said. “They do not want to address it because it is uncomfortable.”

While preparing for her project, Sweazea spent time at ONE FIRE Victim Services, the Cherokee Nation’s domestic violence resource center. The purpose they found in their work was admirable to her.

“It was profound hearing the calls and seeing what they do,” she said. “I witnessed how frequently children are collateral damage and it further emphasized the need for intervention.”

Sweazea hosts her sessions each Wednesday after school. There, she is supported by Sequoyah High School’s school-based specialist, Sandra Lambert.

“Sandra told me that sometimes children need permission to break a cycle,” Sweazea said. “I’m honored to be able to give them that chance.”