Medical Student
David Geffen School of Medicine
Disclosure(s): No financial relationships to disclose
I am a third-year medical student at UCLA. My interest in the field of infectious diseases first began back in the summer of 2016, at a time when I was deep in my studies of general ecology. My first in-depth venture into the field was when I learned about the dog-tick-human dynamics of the seasonally dreaded Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever in Mexicali, Mexico, the neighbor of my California hometown. That lesson in infectious disease ecology opened a whole new world for me, one that motivated me to pivot from my studies of freshwater ecology to the study of infectious diseases. Learning that I could combine my lifelong passion in ecology with my newfound interest in infectious diseases, I became excited to study zoonotic diseases within the interface of animals and humans. However, a couple of years later, early in my Master of Public Health education, I felt drawn to study a disease that affected my community in ways unparalleled to that of any Rickettsial species. Coming across published quantitative values that social factors like homophobia, stigma, discrimination, and racism imparted on the risk and overall increasing incidence of HIV infection among Latino and Black MSM was oddly cathartic. There were actual numbers to impact that these abstract “differences in opinion” conferred! I realized that the interface I would be studying would be between the social determinants of health and marginalized communities. Since then, I have conducted research on the disproportionate burden of infectious diseases, including HIV, Hepatitis C, and STIs among marginalized communities and I have used this work to highlight important areas of intervention. I aim to one day be conducting interventional work, whether it be biomedical prevention, substance use or mental health treatment, or community work for hard-to-reach populations that continue to carry a disproportionate burden of HIV/AIDS.