What have you accomplished and been up to since you have graduated?

Immediately after graduating college, I drove across the country to start a 2-year research fellowship at the NIH’s National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. In this position, I used state and national datasets to look at national adolescent suicide trends and substance use among Southern California alternative high school students. I am really proud that both of these projects culminated in publications (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/article-abstract/2816956; https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1054139X24002878; https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1054139X23005529). I also became  active in using my position as a researcher at a federal institution to advocate for better care for LGBTQ youth (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673621028725?via%3Dihub; https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/lgbt.2021.0324; https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/pubhef-2023-0041/html). Some of my work has been included in policy briefs for NGOs and both state and international governmental entities.
Simultaneously, I was working as a clinical intern at an opioid treatment center. This was where I really developed my identity and values as a future healthcare worker. I fell in love with the social medicine aspect of addiction and psychiatric medicine, where so much of the healthcare we were providing wasn’t prescribing medications, but rather partnering with patients to find solutions to obstacles and problems that are outside the clinical exam room, such as creating a safer living situation, repairing relationships with their friends and family, finding employment, or securing reliable transportation to the clinic and work. I was also a Crisis Counselor for the Trevor Project, which was an incredibly important experience for me as I was able to occupy a supporting role for LGBTQ youth that I wished I had while being out in my childhood. Through this position, I saw the deep, sustained impacts of anti-LGBTQ federal, state, and local policy across the country as the need for our services drastically increased with each passage of such bills.

While in medical school, I have focused a lot of my efforts toward harm reduction and addiction medicine and education, both in the clinical sphere and on campus. This past summer I received funding for writing a hospital policy for addressing in-hospital substance use through a person-centered, harm reduction-based approach that focuses on patient support and medical management instead of punishment and law enforcement. I also currently sit on the New York Society for Addiction Medicine Board of Directors as the state’s medical student/trainee co-representative, my school’s Harm Reduction Task Force as the medical student representative, and executive board of the Harm Reduction and Addiction Medicine Student Interest group, working to decrease stigma toward people who use drugs in medical education and to integrate a harm reduction into the school culture, curriculum, and student resources both at Sinai and medical education institutions across the state.

Outside of medical school, I was a content advisor for the The Mütter Museum at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia’s “Redefining Respect, Reinterpreting Remains” exhibit, curating a section of the exhibit on the roles of science and medicine in abusing and exploiting communities of color through advancing racist ideologies, research, and clinical practices.

Describe your current and future plans and how the Global Health Program influenced you.

I am currently a second year medical student at Icahn School of Medicine. I’m exploring specialties such as psychiatry and internal medicine, but I’m unsure of my exact plans outside of having addiction medicine be a significant part of it.

GHP significantly influenced me because all of my goals in my career are focused on going upstream and being a physician that operates at the intersection of patient care, health justice, and public health and policy––all of which being central tenets of global health. In fact, the beginning of my formalized interest in addiction and health policy is because of GHP when I took USP 133 Social Inequality and Policy and PSYC 179 Drugs, Addiction, and Mental Disorders! Not to mention I became passionate in population health research, specifically health equity research, because of Dr. Saravia’s GLBH 20 course.

If you have advice for Global Health students or favorite things about the program.

One of my favorite parts of GHP was definitely the professors! They were also eager to form bonds with the students and encourage them to pursue all sorts of different passions and goals. I highly encourage students to reach out to professors in the courses they like (whether it’s a GHP course or not) and ask to meet just to chat!
Dr. Paula Saravia was my mentor throughout college and was always an amazing person to bounce ideas off of and discuss or debate the latest in global health––we even had a little book club that I cherished so much! I distinctly remember the two of us talking about COVID-19 when the first cases were being reported and we talked about how the world may react and potential strategies to mitigate the spread, applying the same lessons and global health techniques that I learned in class. It was a moment where all GHP students really saw our courses come to life, putting into perspective how important our education is and shaping how we approach our future endeavors.

I also loved how interactive and “applied” our courses were, since so many involved group projects and case studies where we tried making our own creative solutions to real-world problems. It was really cool to work with peers who were all interested and passionate in so many different aspects of global health. Everyone was so inspiring and encouraging of each other :) Along those same lines, I really felt like the major was a tight-knit group and I have fond memories of forming bonds with classmates that I felt was really unique to GHP because of how small the class sizes were and our shared missions of better health for all.

Finally, the emphasis placed on anthropology and sociology I have found really important and impactful. For example, simply how “health and wellness” manifests differently for different people, communities, and cultures are lessons that are so essential for anyone going into healthcare and I will carry with me into every health and clinical situation I encounter.