Kiara Marmolejos Social Media Takeover

To invigorate Social Mission Alliance’s social media presence with student perspectives on issues related to social mission in health professional education, on the first Friday of each month, one Health Justice initiative member gets the opportunity to posts about themselves, activities they’re involved in, and their interests relative to social mission across SMA’s social media platforms (Instagram and LinkedIn).

See below for the social media takeover by Kiara Marmolejos on December 15, 2023.

#FutureFeatureFriday

Hey Y’all! My name is Kiara Marie Marmolejos. I am one of this year’s Health Justice Fellows and I graduated from the Yale Physician Associate Program on Monday! I’m a proud City University of NY (CUNY) Baruch graduate, Brooklyn native and Prep for Prep alum.  I am passionate about improving patient –provider interactions, intersectional diversity in healthcare professions, and bringing community back into medicine.

I was very excited to come to New Haven for PA school in the fall of 2021. I never spent much time in Connecticut as a New Yorker. But, as soon as I stepped foot in New Haven, I knew that I wanted to learn more about the community and its relationship with the surrounding medical institution.

The diversity in New Haven reminded me of home right away. I grew up in East New York and also spent some time before PA school as a medical scribe in Harlem and the East Bronx. New Haven has a rich culture and community. It’s also a great place to get involved with organizing, advocacy, and municipal politics. I was eager to learn how to get involved, so I made sure to make my own adventure! Here are some tables from CTDataHaven

One of the best parts of my PA school journey was the student-run US Health Justice Elective for nursing, PA, and medical students at YSM. This is also a story of how I got connected with Social Mission Alliance. HUGE Shoutout to Robert Rock and Tehreem Rehman for creating this elective when they were medical students.

The US health justice course provided the health equity content that I was hungry for and helped me find a community of students who were socially aware and willing to be vocal. There was a spirit of hope, change and anti-racism in medicine that I didn’t want to lose from COVID 2020 era, so this class was important to me. A space with nursing, medical, and PA students that cared about current events and improving the landscape of healthcare within a capitalist society was just what I needed. 

I appreciated the US health justice course so much, that I decided to co-lead it the next year (2022) and stay involved. I really enjoyed speaking with community activists and organizations that were born and bred in New Haven.  We covered topics ranging from reproductive rights, local doula groups and maternal health, redlining within the city, mass incarceration, disability, trans and LGBTQ+ health, geriatric restraints and healthcare trauma, the role of medical education in propagating implicit bias, immigration, refugee health, and the environment. It was a stimulating experience that added a lot of passion to the didactic portion of my education. I was familiar with most concepts in the course prior to joining, but it was important for me to hear this content discussed within the walls of my institution. Here are some photos of our USHJ retreat with Robert Rock!

One community organization that really resonated with me was the Connecticut Violence Intervention Program.  As their mission statement reads; “CTVIP is a group of trusted, trained community members that disrupt, prevent, and stop the spread of violence which results in trauma through crisis intervention and proactive relationships with the highest-risk youths and the institutions that impact their lives in the Greater New Haven area.”

This group of community leaders had inspiring personal stories to share with students; some had experiences with incarceration. We learned about their upbringing, and the paths that led them to wanting to help at risk youth and preventing gun violence in New Haven.  This organization hit a very soft spot in my heart, as I personally knew a victim of gun violence as a 16-year-old teen growing up in East New York, Brooklyn.  

For a period of time, this organization had a relationship with the YNHH Emergency Department. Members would intervene before at risk youth were discharged from the hospital to minimize police involvement. They also helped communication between healthcare teams and patient families in difficult or tragic situations. My passion is to become a trustworthy healthcare provider for my community. Meeting Leonard Jahad (Director of CTVIP), Juneboy (Team Leader of CTVIP; Author of Citizen Outlaw), and Tyrone (Violence Prevention professional)  helped me solidify my goals of becoming more than a healthcare provider, but also an integrated community member wherever I practice.

Another great organization that highlights the strengths of the New Haven community is Cornell Scott Hill Health Center, an FQHC (federally qualified health clinic) serving a large portion of the population. I was able to do a 4-week rotation with Cornell Scott during my clinical year! My time was split between Primary care, homeless outreach+ addiction medicine, and infectious disease which included HIV+ HepC management.  I spent two days a week doing outreach and walking around the community that I was eager to know more about.  My preceptors had beautiful and close relationships with their patients. I was able to perform physical exam checks at the Metro North Union Station and podiatric care at the Community Soup Kitchen. I loved my FQHC experience and everything about community medicine. I am applying to the NHS students to service scholarship and working at a local FQHC is the goal!

A huge highlight from PA school was my volunteer involvement in Health Professions Recruitment Exposure program (HPREP). This pipeline program was run by medical students from the Student National Medical Association and Latino Medical Student Association. We held weekly group sessions with New Haven high-school students that are interested in STEM and health related careers. It was great to speak to youth about their options, the requirements for graduate school programs, and why they are vital to the growth of medicine and STEM. It is incredible that these pipeline programs exist, and I will always volunteer to help diversify higher education. I’m a product of a pipeline program (prep for prep) and I understand the importance of children seeing familiar faces in different occupations. In this current political climate and after the result of the Supreme Court decision on Affirmative Action, it is inspiring that medical students are doing this work on their own. I wish all schools used their admin offices to support these kind of initiatives!

There were two talks that I attended during my time in PA school that were extremely impactful for me. One was titled “Precision Medicine- Our future or folly?” with speaker Merlin Chowkwanyun. He is a public health historian who’s work centers on the history of community health, environmental health regulation, racial inequality, and social movement/activism around health. He has a paper titled “Health, Social Reform, and Medical Schools — The Training of American Physicians and the Dissenting Tradition.” I loved hearing his opinions on the emerging popularity of using genetic data to make broad brush claims about multifactorial diseases and the need to highlight social reasons for poor healthcare outcomes.

The second talk that was extremely impactful was given by Dr. Charmaine Royal from Duke University titled “Race Genomics, and Society”. She spoke about the legacy of eugenics that is still at play still in the medical education system and in medical research – especially in genetics research + “precision medicine” efforts. My favorite paper of hers it titled “Inferring Genetic Ancestry: Opportunities, Challenges, and Implications”.  Genetic essentialism is a large but important topic to me as a college biochemistry major who loved research. I enjoyed attending conferences and lectures regarding the legacy of slavery in academia and ivy league institutions.  I used these concepts and tried to update my own medical curriculum.

When thinking about my goals to improve medical curriculums, I must give Joel Bervell his flowers. He is someone who made me feel brave enough to push for change. I am extremely inspired by Joel Bervell – a Ghanian-American medical student activist who calls himself the “medical myth buster”. I discovered him while searching for literature on how to update medical curriculums. I stumbled across his social media and realized he was saying everything I wanted the world to know- out loud! When I co-led the US health Justice course in 2022, we invited him to come speak to our class. He took time out of his day (even on a surgery rotation) to talk to us about his path to being an effective student activist and science communicator. Shout-out to Joel Bervell- his consulting services might be needed at medical and PA schools across the nation.

On that note, student activism was a very important concept to me throughout PA school. I tried to organize in the ways that I could during a busy clinical year. I was involved with a Reproductive Rights protest in 2022. More recently, with the news of the worsening conflict in the middle east, a few colleagues and I gathered baked goods and garage sale items to sell on campus. We were able to raise about $1,800 in two days, even in the rain! Even though I am a horrible runner, I participated in a 5K for Free Haven Clinic fundraising.

Another effort I was involved in, is the student-led Hunger and Homelessness Auction at YSM. We hold an auction event that includes items/gift cards from surrounding businesses and other large faculty donations to raise money for local nonprofits that fight food and housing insecurity in New Haven. After our event on December 6th, we raised over $17,000!

This year’s grant winners were: Beth-El Homeless Shelter, Bradley Street Bike Co-op, United way of greater new haven, and New Haven Pride Center.

I will be honest, clinical year was a busy one, but I still found myself involved with these small projects. This is the kind of work that made me feel whole while finishing my training.

Thank you all for reading about my journey during PA school. I am excited for the relationship I will continue to nurture with Social Mission Alliance. This fellowship was an awesome way to get connected to students that care about improving health outcomes through diversifying higher education and academia.

There is an alarming amount of privileged students in medical, PA, and dental schools. If we want our most under-resourced patients to have good outcomes, we need to start by diversifying healthcare fields. People that actually want to serve diverse populations deserve to be in the healthcare field. Our healthcare workers should be members of the community, rather than fearful of it! I hope to get even more involved in policy work as I advance through my career. I recognize the extreme importance of diversifying medicine, especially the PA profession.

I am grateful for the mentorship that SMA provides and I can’t wait for our conference in April! Wish me luck on the PA job search! Peace out!