SquashWise, an after school youth enrichment program that helps Baltimore students develop the mental and physical discipline to achieve academically through playing squash, has won the prestigious 2016 Henrietta Lacks Memorial Award.
The annual award, administered by the Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute, provided SquashWise with $15,000 to add a new class of 20 "rookies" this school year and continue to support students from middle school through college.
The award, in its sixth year, is given to one organization per year and is named for the famous Turner Station resident Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman whose cells from a cancerous tumor were cultured to create the first human immortal cell line. The cell line, known as HeLa, has transformed modern medical science and is still being used for medical research.