The Power of a Phone Call

There is incredible power and potential that can come from a single phone call. That was the case when I received a call from my mentor Abhi this past summer. Little did I know how valuable it would be to my future involvement within medicine and healthcare.

Abhi and I previously connected through our involvement with the UCLA Riordan Scholars program as I was paired up with him as his mentee. Still, I was quite surprised to see an incoming call from him but answered eagerly. He presented me with an issue that he and his mentor Dr. Desiree Sanchez wanted to create a solution for. Through their experiences in the medical field, they saw that immigrant and minority families face many barriers that make it challenging to access healthcare and lead to disparities in health. From what they have seen, children often play an important role as caregivers and facilitators in their parents' care. There might be an opportunity to create an app to help empower young adults to serve as healthcare facilitators to improve health disparities in immigrant communities. Coming from a family of immigrants and having a wide variety of experiences with the healthcare system, I resonated immensely with the issue they had raised.

So, when he presented me with the opportunity to become a leader within a project that would attempt to tackle that issue, I accepted it enthusiastically. We began brainstorming immediately and concocted a plan of action to get started with the project.

Following that meeting, I began recruiting my friends and peers who were equally as passionate about improving access to proper healthcare as we were. Once I had a foundational group, we began working on the project at hand.

I personally feel deeply passionate when it comes to providing access to proper and equitable healthcare. Having experienced first-hand what it is like to feel lost and confused when it came to matters of my health or my family’s health, I knew there would be a time when I would become involved with the change. Therefore, I am confident that this project will contribute to the dismantling of inequitable access to healthcare that has plagued the United States healthcare system for decades. While we may be starting out small, our drive to succeed is tremendous, allowing us to not only accomplish our goals, but surpass them.

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