My introduction to public health did not begin in academia; it began as a patient. In 2018, during what should have been an ordinary semester, I experienced kidney failure caused by lithium toxicity. I was hospitalized and forced to confront both the fragility of health and the enormous role public systems play in access to care, medication management, and continuity of treatment. That experience stayed with me long after my kidney function recovered.
When I resumed my education at the University of South Florida College of Public Health years later, I began to see the broader framework behind the suffering I once experienced. I became a student researcher in the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program, where I had the opportunity to work under the mentorship of Blake Barrett, MSPH. His guidance helped me understand public health not only as an academic discipline, but as a strategic tool, one that uses data, prevention, and policy to shape outcomes far upstream of the clinical encounter.
This mentorship, combined with coursework and research, transformed my perspective on medicine. At the same time, I worked as a medical scribe for an interventional cardiology practice, where I saw the downstream effects of delayed prevention: many patients struggled with transport, finances, health literacy, and chronic conditions years before they ever made it to the cath lab. It became clear that what looks like a “cardiac event” inside a clinic often began as a public health failure in the community.
In 2025, the USF College of Public Health featured me three times in its news publications, including a story highlighting how left-ventricular assist devices affect patients with obesity and their families. Those communication projects reinforced how powerful storytelling can be for policymakers and the public, especially when translating complex health issues into human-centered narratives.
I plan to pursue an MD/MPH and work at the intersection of clinical medicine and public health policy. Growing up in Ponce, Puerto Rico, and later in Florida, I saw how social determinants income, education, and disaster response, shape health outcomes. Without sustained public health funding, the healthcare system will continue to focus on crisis rather than prevention, and patients will continue to suffer the consequences.
This story matters because policymakers and funders rarely see how young professionals discover public health through lived experience. Many of us are motivated not just by coursework, but by what we have observed in ourselves, our families, and our communities. Public health has given me the mentorship, language, and tools to turn those experiences into impact, and it continues to shape how I plan to practice medicine.
