{"id":126515,"date":"2017-06-01T10:06:05","date_gmt":"2017-06-01T14:06:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?post_type=school-college-post&p=126515"},"modified":"2017-06-01T10:29:22","modified_gmt":"2017-06-01T14:29:22","slug":"uconn-med-students-pedaling-public-health-coast-coast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2017\/06\/uconn-med-students-pedaling-public-health-coast-coast\/","title":{"rendered":"UConn Med Students Pedaling for Public Health, Coast to Coast"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just off their first-year finals, two UConn medical students are preparing to continue the summertime cross-country bicycle tour that is now a 12-year school tradition.<\/p>\n

Sonali Rodrigues and Brett Lehner make up the 2017 Coast to Coast for a Cause team. This year\u2019s cause is \u201cAn Apple a Day,\u201d a public health project to improve access to and education around nutrition in Connecticut schools.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe money that we\u2019re raising goes toward planting fruit trees on campuses of high schools and other public places,\u201d Lehner says. \u201cThe idea is that those trees themselves and the fruit from them are about education and access to healthy fruit, available to anyone who comes upon it when it\u2019s ripe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lehner, who grew up in Bethel and completed his undergraduate studies at UConn, committed to the trip in January. Rodrigues, who grew up in Shelton and graduated from Northeastern University, joined on a few months later. Neither claims to be an experienced cyclist.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I first heard about the trip, I figured the people who would be doing it this year would be people who were really experienced, and I didn\u2019t want to hold anyone back,\u201d Rodrigues says. \u201cBut I think Brett and I are kind of at the same level.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two plan to follow a path similar to last year\u2019s ride, mostly along the bicycle route known as the Northern Tier. It starts in Anacortes, Washington, and continues through the northern border states. They\u2019ll fly to Seattle, which is about 80 miles south of Anacortes, June 9 and start pedaling east the next day.<\/p>\n

\"\"
This is the route UConn medical students Sonali Rodrigues and Brett Lehner are following from Washington state to Connecticut this summer as they pedal cross-country to support public health programs. (coast2coastforacause2017.wordpress.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI think a lot of those northern states, I don\u2019t think I ever would have been to in my life, so I feel like there will be a lot of new experiences in those places,\u201d Rodrigues says. \u201cAlso just being outside for that long; we\u2019ve been inside studying for most of the year so it\u2019ll be just really nice. This is really going to be a lot of outdoors time but that’s what I’m looking forward to the most. And one part of the trip that looks really cool is right along Lake Erie. We\u2019re biking along the whole side of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

They plan to cover the 3,500-mile journey in about eight weeks. Lehner has a friend from his undergrad days who will join them for the first few weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m looking forward to spending time outside, being able to slow down, not knowing what you\u2019re going to be doing in each state, not knowing what you\u2019re going to be coming across,\u201d Lehner says. \u201cOverall the trip is a good way to get to know America a little more, get to know the culture, see a lot of places, and meet a lot of interesting people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Along the way, the riders plan to keep a blog for remote observers to track their progress: coast2coastforacause2017.wordpress.com<\/a>. When they return to Connecticut they plan to keep the tradition of inviting friends, family and supporters to join them for the last leg of the trip, a roughly 45-mile ride from UConn Health to the Connecticut coast, where the journey ends with Rodrigues\u2019 and Lehner\u2019s tires in the Atlantic waters of the Long Island Sound.<\/p>\n

Earlier in the spring, the students held an auction of goods and experiences, including faculty-student dinners donated by the faculty, and raised around $6,000. They will continue to fundraise through the end of the trip. Those interested in supporting this year\u2019s ride can learn how at bit.ly\/17c2cfundraise<\/a>. That page also includes a video Lehner created about this year\u2019s trip<\/a> and the public health mission it supports.<\/p>\n

Some form of this cross-country cycling tour has taken place each year since 2006, when a pair of UConn medical students pedaled from California to Connecticut to raise money for leukemia research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two UConn medical students are spending the summer on a cross-country bicycle tour to raise money for public health.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":126519,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1868],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2010],"class_list":["post-126515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meds"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-08 12:15:40","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/126519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126515"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=126515"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=126515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}