Congratulations to Geisel School of Medicine’s Latino Medical Student Association (LMSA) for winning a 2016 Regional Chapter of the Year Award. Congratulations are also in order for second-year Geisel students Adrianna Stanley and Freddy Vazquez, who were elected co-directors of the association’s Northeast Region. Both were announced during the organization’s recent Regional Conference.
Humbled and thrilled by the opportunity to continue serving on the Northeast board as co-director elects, Stanley says, “Freddy and I look forward to keeping the momentum going and having Dartmouth remain a leading force within the LMSA community for the next two years and beyond.”
Founders of the LMSA-NE’s Geisel chapter, Stanley and Vazquez organized the conference held at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. Because of their dedication, planning, and attention to detail, the conference brought nearly 300 attendees to the event, including students and alumni interested in Latino healthcare throughout the Northeast.
“I would like to thank all of the individuals who spoke at the event. We are a new organization and it meant a lot that they took us seriously,” Vazquez says. “Some traveled from as far away as Georgia and California to be here. While Adrianna and I coordinated all of the planning, it was our speakers and guests who made this conference such an amazing event.”
According to Stanley, the conference was one of the largest held at Dartmouth-Hitchcock. Breaking new ground in the LMSA-NE, the conference attracted a record number of undergraduate students and was a first on two important fronts: The first conference held in a rural setting and the first conference to feature migrant health, bringing together on one panel a migrant farm worker, farm owner, migrant health physician, and medical students.
“I’m proud of how Adrianna and Freddy took the initiative to form a chapter of the LMSA at Geisel,” says Interim Dean Duane Compton. “They did an outstanding job of organizing the regional meeting that raised awareness for the Latino population both at Geisel and throughout the Northeast.”
Stanley and Vazquez say they are immensely grateful for all of the support they have received from the Dartmouth community—from the administration and faculty to the staff, students, and the greater Upper Valley community.
“We especially want to thank the first-year Geisel LMSA students who had no idea what they were stepping into when they arrived on campus in the fall,” Stanley says. “Amidst quizzes and finals, they really stepped up to make critical components of the conference a success—from inviting all of the conference speakers to setting up the poster session—we really could not have done it without the tremendous effort put forth by our fellow Geisel classmates.”
