During the height of the pandemic, I saw a headline about a rise in homelessness among Houston’s LGBTQ+ youth. Out of habit, I went to repost the article, but with an issue so close to home, I knew that I could and should take a more active role. Earlier that year, my sister had started her medical transition from male to female, so I saw firsthand how hostile the state was becoming for transgender youth. I immediately reached out to the only day shelter in the area that caters to the LGBTQ+ community, and they replied that they were struggling to meet the demand for hygiene and first aid supplies. Over the next few days, I organized a group of volunteers from my high school’s Sexuality and Gender Alliance to start collecting donations. We started making weekly trips to the shelter to catalog donations and put together care packages. We also started a drive for gender-affirming winter clothing. At the end of the season, we had the opportunity to sit down with several members of the shelter for a meal and distribute supplies. Talking to kids my age who frequented the shelter confirmed to me that words weren’t enough. No amount of writing, reposting, or calling local representatives would have gotten them what they needed when they needed it. Being able to provide for others directly is something that motivates me, and it’s a big part of my interest in practicing medicine today. My decision to go into medicine as a means to help my community stems from different personal interactions I’ve had with the medical field throughout my life. As a child, I was a competitive gymnast until a fall left me with a dislocated wrist and shattered growth plate. I saw more doctors than I could count over the course of that year, ranging from the orthopedic surgeon who reset my wrist to the psychiatrist who helped me get over my fear of another injury. That experience gave me a new appreciation for what physicians do, and I had my first inkling then that it might be a career I was interested in. Throughout middle and high school, I saw medicine from a different lens as I watched my family navigate the healthcare system. Both my parents have heart conditions, so I spent lots of time in hospitals. None of my immediate family members are physicians, but several family friends would call or fly in to help my parents get the care that they needed and offer advice. I admired their ability to offer comfort during those stressful times, and I realized that I wanted to be able to do that for others one day. As soon as I was old enough, I applied to volunteer at Texas Children’s Hospital because of my interest in pediatrics. Interacting with young patients and their families solidified for me that I wanted to work in healthcare. Being able to take some of the stress off of their shoulders was fulfilling, and I was drawn to watching the doctors do their rounds every day. This summer, I had the opportunity to return as a volunteer and shadow several specialists after COVID-19 restrictions were lifted. Above all else, the personal relationship that each doctor had with their patients stuck out to me. As a future physician, I want to build the kind of compassionate doctor-patient relationships that make my patients feel safe, heard, and understood. I hope to advocate for patients who have been historically marginalized and make certain that every Texan gets the care that they need and deserve.

My ideal career has always been in the medical field, but my ultimate life goal is to serve as a compassionate and informed bridge between physicians and policymakers. This objective did not evolve overnight but rather grew along with my experiences in my family, community, and in local politics. During a high school internship with a local congressional campaign where I canvassed prospective voters on the issues that mattered to them, I found that access to affordable healthcare was a common topic of concern among voters of all backgrounds. Growing up in a family that suffered from back-to-back chronic health issues, I shared those same concerns. As a child, I saw firsthand how difficult navigating the healthcare system was for my grandparents as immigrants who struggled with the language. In high school, I noted how multiple specialists repeatedly ignored my mother’s health concerns until a routine check revealed a heart valve defect. I could not help but wonder if the care that my family received might have been different if their doctors were trained to look at diverse patients differently and recognize diverse needs. It was in these early days that I realized I wanted to be more than a good doctor. I want to advocate for stricter health equity measures that hold physicians and the healthcare system accountable to the patients who rely on them. Although so many of my goals in medicine lie ahead of me, I have been anxious to find ways to make a difference as a concerned undergraduate. At the beginning of 2022, I interned with the Texas nonprofit CHILDREN AT RISK where I specialized in policy research on child and family health. Working through immense amounts of data on healthcare outcomes in my native Houston, I quickly learned that the maternal mortality rate for Black and Brown women was several times higher than that of women of any other race. Beyond the facts and figures, I knew that there was an underlying problem that the data could not quite explain. It was the same phenomenon, I suspected, that kept my mother from getting the care she needed for so many months. As a research assistant in the University of Virginia Social Cognition and Behavior Lab, I have been given an opportunity to address health inequity, specifically in women's health. I am currently the principal investigator on a study that seeks to understand how and why pain experienced by pregnant women of color is perceived differently by the general public. The implication of this study is to hopefully understand how culturally ingrained bias seeps into medical care, even for physicians who are highly caring and self-aware. With this knowledge, I believe that there are public policy steps that can be taken to improve medical training and alter healthcare policies such as high costs that make marginalized communities weary of the doctor's office. As a future physician and current policy wonk, I am passionate about turning research and words into action. To this end, I plan to intern with a member of Congress this coming summer to further study health policy and share the concerns I have heard from my community. I sincerely hope that the work that I have started today will raise a broader conversation about healthcare equity as it affects all of us.