Contributing Writer
University of Kentucky College of Medicine
Thomas Amburn is a second-year medical student at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine in Lexington, Kentucky class of 2022. In 2015, he graduated from Transylvania University with a Bachelor of Arts in chemistry. After graduation, he then lived in Thailand for a year as a Fulbright scholar. He enjoys caring for his plants, writing, and planning his next travel in his free time. In the future, Thomas would like to pursue a career in general surgery.
As I grew up, I felt these lines and had a vague idea of where they lay. I knew where in Louisville I felt “safe,” and I also knew where the “bad parts of town” were located. The lines and their forced labels serve to enhance the lives of some people, myself included, while limiting others. Two cities exist within one border separated by an undeniable feature — skin color.
I agree that protesting is best done in peace, / But wasn’t that tried by taking a knee? / Or hashtags that said Black Lives Matter, / And praying that change would come with the chatter.
I stand for justice and peace; / I stand for equity alongside equality. / I stand until the hate crimes cease.
“Defund the police” has become one of the slogans of the protests shaking our nation amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. But what does this term truly mean, and could defunding the police be helpful for both the police and the health care community?
Interviewers who ask these questions in a professional setting typically consider these issues to be academic — purely topics for discussion that might provide useful insight into the way the applicant views the world. But for applicants who have been affected, these issues are not merely academic and their discussion can invoke significant emotional turmoil. So before we continue to tacitly accept this shift in interviewing, it is important to consider its purpose and impact on those being interviewed.
But we should not need to view videos of Black individuals suffering or in pain in order to mobilize. Others, unrecorded and alone, die by the hands of our state. It is time for Americans to turn their gaze away from violent images of Black death and inwards to consider the invisible and not-so-invisible ways we uphold white supremacy every single day.
The histories of Fox Point and Brooklyn reveal how where we call home is deeply intertwined with identity, power and privilege. They tell the story of structural racism — a patterned, “normative, sometimes legalized” process by which communities of color are marginalized. The sequelae of structural racism have dire health implications at the neighborhood-level.
From a public health perspective, we in Oregon have nowhere near the number of cases as our northern neighbors in Washington, although with delayed testing it is hard to tell exactly how many people are infected. But as we continue to follow the pattern of disease spread that has been demonstrated in Wuhan and Italy, we can presume that things will only escalate from here. And with it, inequities will be laid bare.
For my first student interview, I spoke with Nana Amma Sekyere. She is a fellow second-year medical student at Central Michigan University College of Medicine (CMED). She actively promotes diversity at CMED by leading the Student Diversity Committee.
It’s a common scenario: a male medical student and a female resident walk into a patient’s room together, and the patient automatically assumes that the man is the doctor, and the woman is the nurse.
I sat down with Jade Johnson, the Coordinator of Diversity and Inclusion at Central Michigan University College of Medicine (CMED), to talk about current initiatives to further promote cultural competence on campus.
The United States is the most heavily incarcerated country in the developed world, and with that comes many secondary consequences, including children growing up with incarcerated parents. Although efforts have been made to mitigate the harm associated with having an incarcerated parent, few are focused on meeting the direct health needs of these children through preventative health care.
Contributing Writer
University of Missouri-Columbia School of Medicine
Calli is a fourth year medical student at University of Missouri-Columbia School of Medicine in Columbia, MO class of 2020. In 2016, she graduated from University of South Carolina with a Bachelor of Science in chemistry in lowercase. She enjoys dancing, spending time with her family, and listening to true crime podcasts her free time. After graduating medical school, Calli would like to pursue a career in pediatrics.
