Can a new pair of sneakers improve a child’s mental health and instill cultural competency in future doctors?

FORT WORTH –  The gift of a new pair of sneakers can brighten the day and instill confidence in almost any child, but can it improve a child’s mental health and instill cultural competency in future doctors?

This is the question that Sam Sayed, MS-4 at Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at Texas Christian University, is trying to answer with his four-year Scholarly Pursuit & Thesis (SPT) research project.

DAYNA’S FOOTPRINTS FEATURED ON GOOD MORNING AMERICA

Sayed’s non-profit organization Dayna’s Footprints, which is at the center of the research, aims to combat education inequalities through the gift of shoes for Dallas-Fort Worth children. 

“We hope that they see themselves walking in our shoes,” Sayed said. “Perhaps one day becoming a doctor or at least being able to dream bigger with that increased sense of confidence.” 

This year, several first-year medical students and kids from the COMO community will be surveyed before and after the shoe shopping events as a part of Sayed’s SPT research project. He adapted a survey from Alexander Green, MD, MPH, Co-Founder of Quality Interactions, Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Senior Investigator in the Division of General Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, to gauge the cultural competency of the first-year medical students. 

It all correlates with building empathy and the Empathetic Scholar™ curriculum at the medical school, according to Stuart D. Flynn, M.D., Founding Dean of Burnett School of Medicine at TCU.  

“Every one of these projects by definition has something to do with medicine and it has something to do with patients,” Dean Flynn said. “I can guarantee you with Sam when he goes to one of his clinics in one of these underrepresented areas Sam looks at that patient base very differently than if he wasn’t doing this project.” 

Sam and his brother Sharif Sayed started Dayna’s Footprints in 2018, which is a nonprofit organization named after their late sister, Dayna Sayed. Dayna died in a drive-by shooting on March 8, 1997, when she was 16. At the time, Sam was 11 and Sharif was 9. 

Before that tragic event, Dayna had gotten her first summer job at Just For Feet in Arlington, Texas. She saved up enough money to buy her siblings brand new pairs of Nike sneakers. It was the very first pair of notable footwear either of them had received. 

It was a pivotal and emotional moment, Sam Sayed said.  

“It felt like just overnight our confidence grew,” he said. “Having a pair of shoes that made us excited just to wake up in the morning and put them on and rush out the door to go to school.” 

At 34, Sam began medical school at Burnett School of Medicine in July 2020 during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Since 2020, with help from his classmates, the organization has raised more than $250,000 to buy more than 1,000 pairs of sneakers for Dallas-Fort Worth area kids. 

Sam and Sharif have also used their love for health and fitness to create the Million Pound Challenge (MPC) with Dayna’s Footprints. Each holiday season on social media, from November 1 through January 1, they lift more than a million pounds of total weight volume and share their progress on social media using the hashtag #daynasfootprints. They ask other participants to post videos of themselves lifting weights using the hashtag to create a buzz to help spur donations.   

Sayed’s work on his SPT research project is like a chemical reaction in, “the way he’s bringing other students along for the journey,” Dean Flynn said.  

Sam Sayed praised his classmates who have selflessly taken time to help him do meaningful work to connect and improve health care in the Fort Worth community. 

“They selflessly want to be a part of this,” Sayed said. “It was easy for them to want to show up on a Saturday and help some kids gain some confidence and see some joy in their eyes.”