The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship (ASF) of Alabama announced today the recipient of its 2025 Alabama Schweitzer Humanitarian of the Year Award. Dr. John Dorsey, Executive Director and Founder of Project Horseshoe Farm, will receive this year’s award in recognition of his work with Project Horseshoe Farm. Dr. Dorsey will be recognized at the Alabama Schweitzer Fellowship’s annual Celebration of Service event on April 12, 2025, hosted by the McWhorter School of Pharmacy on the campus of Samford University alongside the 2024-25 Fellow Class.
The Alabama Schweitzer Fellowship provides its Fellows with professional development activities that allow them to interact with influential public health leaders throughout the state. The Humanitarian of the Year gives a keynote address to the outgoing class at each Celebration of Service. Dr. Dorsey’s keynote is entitled, “Making a Difference in a Time of Change.”
Since its founding in 2007, Project Horseshoe Farm has focused on two key questions: “What drives community health and how can we prepare aspiring future leaders to act individually and collectively to help our vulnerable neighbors and strengthen local communities?” In 2009, Project Horseshoe Farm created a pioneering educational grant – “Community Health Gap Year Fellowship – for top recent college graduates from across the country. Since then, they’ve also added Internships for top undergraduate, masters, post-baccalaureate and health professional students. Fellows and interns volunteer in multiple programs that allow them access to vulnerable communities and populations, including seniors, adults living with mental illness, youth, isolated communities, etc. Fellows and Interns also participate in ongoing teaching, mentoring, coaching, readings, discussions and reflection. The combination of volunteer and teaching experiences contribute to the organization’s mission to work with and build on the strengths of local communities, improve the health and quality of life of vulnerable communities and prepare community health and citizen service leaders for tomorrow’s communities
“Dr. Dorsey has served as an example of living his life as his argument, as Schweitzer said, by moving from California to Alabama to serve adults with mental illness,” wrote his nominator. “He has inspired a lot of future health professionals by creating the yearlong PHF fellowship program, which serves as a gap year for many students before going to professional school. In my encounters with him, he has been humble and seems to emulate the ideas of being a part of the community and valuing lived experience, which we encourage in our Fellows, too.”
Prior to moving to Greensboro in 2005, Dr. Dorsey was on the faculty at Loma Linda University Medical Center where he served as Co-Medical Director of an Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) team that provided psychiatric and supportive services to patients with severe mental illness living in the inland empire of southern California. In addition to his current work with Project Horseshoe Farm, Dr. Dorsey provides psychiatric care and services on the Board of Directors at Hale County Hospital. He also serves as the staff psychiatrist at Colonial Haven Nursing Home. He is an adjunct clinical faculty member at the University of Alabama School of Medicine and was selected as a “Pillar of West Alabama” by the Community Foundation of West Alabama. He is a member of Class XXI of Leadership Alabama. He attends St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Greensboro where he serves on the Vestry.
