Hey Y’all! I graduated from UC Davis with a degree in Global Disease Biology in Fall 2016. Before coming to UC Davis, I attended various community colleges in Sacramento. At UC Davis, I was co-director for the Willow Clinic, a free, student-run clinic for unhoused individuals in the Sacramento area. Additionally, I started a mentorship program for pre-health transfer students designed to pair them with senior transfer students to ease the transition to UC Davis. I also volunteered with UC Davis hospice and worked in a medical microbiology lab studying the effects of immunodeficiency viruses on the integrity of mucosal barriers. After graduating, I worked as an advisor in both the GDB department and at Health Professions Advising, helping students clarify their path to their degree or to healthcare careers after graduation.

I’m now a fourth-year medical student at UC Davis School of Medicine, applying to Family Medicine residencies as we speak. Since starting here, I have been a Co-Director for Joan Viteri Memorial Clinic, a student-run clinic that provides care to people who use drugs and people who work in the sex industry. Additionally, I was co-coordinator for JVMC’s mobile clinic, which provides medical services directly to unhoused communities within the Sacramento area. I was also part of the team that started a new, mobile syringe exchange in Stockton, CA which has helped over 350 people gain regular access to sterile injection equipment and other harm reduction supplies. I also currently help second-year medical students learn physical exams and clinical reasoning through our Clinical Skills curriculum and am a TEACH-MS Community Health Scholar.

Many of my passions revolve around care for the unhoused and people who use drugs and projects that work directly within those communities, and I have a strong interest in community medicine. I believe the curriculum in the GDB major set the foundation for the public health knowledge and skills that are necessary to do this work well. The structure of the curriculum and flexibility of electives allowed me to fully explore my interests and take classes that helped me get a deeper understanding of subjects foundational to medicine. Additionally, opportunities like the GDB capstone project helped me build skills in project design that I have used as a medical student. I believe majoring in Global Disease Biology was one of the best decisions I made as a UC Davis student.