{"id":6353,"date":"2016-02-16T16:21:17","date_gmt":"2016-02-16T21:21:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/?p=6353"},"modified":"2016-02-29T10:26:44","modified_gmt":"2016-02-29T15:26:44","slug":"advocates-for-change-in-latino-healthcare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/2016\/advocates-for-change-in-latino-healthcare\/","title":{"rendered":"Advocates for Change in Latino Healthcare"},"content":{"rendered":"

Geisel School of Medicine is known for its inclusive, tight-knit community and rural environment\u2014a compelling pairing that offers unique opportunities to aspiring physicians. Yet for Adrianna Stanley \u201918 and Fernando (Freddy) Vazquez \u201918, there was something missing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Freddy and I were looking at medical schools, one thing we valued and were looking for was a strong Latino community,\u201d Stanley recalls. \u201cWhen we came to Dartmouth we knew there were Latinos here, but a strong, cohesive community wasn\u2019t evident, nor was there a Latino Medical Student Association Northeast (LMSA-NE) chapter.\u201d<\/p>\n

In spite of that perceived deficit, Vazquez and Stanley chose to attend Geisel and during their first year they established an LMSA-NE chapter at the school. They reasoned other prospective Latino medical students shared their interests and Stanley says they wanted to reach out to those considering Geisel to dispel concerns about the dearth of Spanish-speaking patients in the Upper Valley.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn reality, we have a large migrant worker population here and a student-run clinic that interacts with them regularly\u2014and Geisel also offers a medical Spanish elective,\u201d Vazquez notes. \u201cDartmouth has a lot to offer. Being part of the LMSA gives Geisel an additional opportunity to continue building diversity and to dispel misconceptions,\u201d Stanley adds. Geisel is the only rural medical school in the northeast LMSA and the only school offering migrant healthcare opportunities to medical students.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this is sending a very clear message to everyone about how inclusive Dartmouth is and about the opportunities there are for minority Latino students and faculty who might not readily see their population represented or their culture reflected in the population here,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Because Geisel\u2019s LMSA-NE chapter is barely more than a year old, Stanley and Vazquez are surprised by how quickly prospective Latino medical students are reaching out to them, asking to meet for coffee to talk about what it\u2019s like at Dartmouth.<\/p>\n

But this is exactly what the duo wants to encourage.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s why we started the LMSA-NE chapter,\u201d Vazquez says, \u201cto shed light on the fact that Dartmouth has a lot to offer the growing Latino community.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LMSA-logo\"<\/a>Their passion, dedication, and hard work have paid off. On February 20, Geisel is hosting the LMSA 43rd Annual Northeast Regional Conference<\/a>. Organized around the healthcare needs of the Latino community, the event is bringing together medical students, high school and college students interested in health care careers, and practicing physicians. Though anyone interested in healthcare needs of the growing Latin American population is welcome. This is the first time Dartmouth is hosting an event of this magnitude addressing Hispanic health.<\/p>\n

According to Stanley, the dearth of physicians in minority demographics is well known and the issues relating to it are neither discriminatory nor malicious. \u201cIt\u2019s more about being uncomfortable when reaching out to people who are different either through language, appearance, or culture,\u201d Vazquez adds. \u201cAnd the difference, rather than the clinical care, often remains in the foreground.\u201d<\/p>\n

She says their goal for the conference is to make people aware of this issue and to strengthen the doctor-patient relationship through cultural competency.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have something for each of our target populations\u2014workshops and panels on the healthcare needs of the Latino community, student leadership training, healthcare policy, ethnomedicine and cultural competency in practice, the role of underrepresented minorities in academic medicine, and networking events, among others,\u201d Vazquez says.<\/p>\n

Nearly all of the conference speakers have a connection to Dartmouth, either as faculty or as practicing physicians at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. \u201cWe chose them for their work in and their commitment to the Latino population,\u201d Stanley says.<\/p>\n

Stanley and Vazquez have dedicated the conference to the memories of Dr. Arnold Katz, a beloved mentor of Geisel medical students, and Chris Pluta, a mentor of Vazquez\u2019s and countless Latino high school students in Chicago. \u201cIt only takes one person to tell you that you can make it,\u201d Vazquez says.<\/p>\n

First and foremost, the message Stanley and Vazquez want people to take away from the conference is that there is a Latino community at Geisel and it is something Dartmouth cares about. \u201cThe school has been supporting us every step of the way,\u201d Stanley says. \u201cAnd we also want to show the Latino community what Geisel has to offer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA year ago, this organization didn\u2019t exist and now we are hosting a conference for more than 200 people,\u201d Vazquez says. \u201cBut it\u2019s not about us\u2014people can enact change wherever they are. If they have the passion and they think something is just, they should advocate for it even if they are students.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By establishing a first-ever Latino Medical Student Association Northeast chapter at Geisel School of Medicine, Adrianna Stanley ’18 and Freddy Vazquez ’18 are ambassadors for Geisel’s growing Latino community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":6355,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9,1],"tags":[684,496,536,669],"class_list":["post-6353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-news","tag-conference","tag-diversity","tag-medical-students","tag-student-groups","author-12"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/02\/Vasquez-Stanley-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4r3h1-1Et","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6353"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6361,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6353\/revisions\/6361"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}