Projects
The work sampled below was developed as part of an academic team assignment in a course at the University of Florida. Thus, I am not the sole author of this work. The names of team members have been removed for privacy.
As I minored in health disparities, I have grown passionate about being an advocate for equitable, accessible, and acceptable healthcare. In turn, this minor has guided me to create projects throughout my undergraduate career and shift my focus to want to become a physician in a rural area. The powerpoint and supplemental literature below is a part of a project I created for one of my undergraduate courses, FYC4126: Urban and Rural Communities in Transition. Throughout the project, I researched a lot about a specific population; undocumented individuals in Houston, Texas. The project further educated me on the disparities this population faces and also inspired me to want to make a change in providing equitable healthcare to all persons regardless of documentation status.
Health Disparities
In 2021, The USDA stated that 5.0 million children in U.S households with children under 18 years old were food insecure. Additionally, 521,000 children lived in households in which one or more child experienced very low food security. Personally, I have seen first-hand on how food insecurity affected both families and children. So, I decided to take the opportunity to further educate myself and others on the importance of working towards food security in U.S households -- especially those with adolescents. In the project to left, I worked on a semester-long paper and hypothetical program called "Meal Kits for Kids". The project was apart of FYC4212: Planning and Evaluating Family, Youth and Community Science programs, which gave me the tools to create a research-based program that has the potential to realistically thrive in food-insecure areas, rural areas, and food deserts.
Food Insecurity
Mental Health
Mental health has been something I have always been a strong advocate for. Throughout my undergraduate studies, I have taken several trainings to further educate myself on how to identify individuals who may be struggling with mental health challenges and how I can be helpful to provide them with the appropriate resources. In the project to the right, I researched the association between introversion and depression. It started as a project for FYC4801: Applied Social Science Research Methods, where we focused on conducting a research proposal, writing a literature review, and collecting social science research to see if theres an association with personality traits and mental health. Alongside with the powerpoint, I also have the corresponding literature review below as well as a Youth Mental Health First Certificate I earned on my own accord thereafter.
Patient-Physician Relationships
In my first year as a transfer student at the University of Florida, I took Dr. Anthony Manganaro's ENC3254: Writing in Environmental Science course. For one of our first assignments, we were asked to write a review paper on any topic we were interested in researching. I focused my writing on medical sociology and how it can be a possible solution to dismantling healthcare disparities and strengthening patient-physician relationships. I have attached the review paper below to the left to illustrate the ignition of these two interests. Moreover, in my fourth year of my undergraduate education, I became a teaching assistant for Dr. Harris' FYC3101 Parenting and Family Development course as well as a research assistant for Tyler Nesbit's research in reproductive healthcare providers building trust with black women through a mindfulness-based communication program. Through these extracurriculars, I learned the importance on building relationships in both the medical world and in my personal life. I later on used my knowledge to create an interdisciplinary approach of strengthening patient-physicians relationships through trust-building -- which would mitigate health disparities for Black women. Below to the right, I attached the poster prenstation that our research team created for the Spring 2023 Research Symposium.