Starting a health equity career

Graduating college in 2009, I didn’t know what to do with my life. I wasn’t ready for grad school, had no job interviews lined up, and I wasn’t sure where I would live. Right before graduation, I met Adriana, a chatty Ph.D student who told me I should apply for a Fulbright scholarship. I had heard the term “Fulbright”, but I really had no idea what it was. I wasn’t the award-winning type. I was a first-generation Latinx college student with a moderate GPA. Adriana convinced me that it was an incredible opportunity and that I had a good shot at the award.

After four years of relative independence, I moved into my mom’s two-bedroom apartment with my 4 siblings. With an architecture degree at the height of the economic recession, I couldn’t find a job anywhere. I was crushed; I was a Berkeley grad and couldn’t even get a job at the mall. I felt lost.

Months earlier, the guy I was dating had given me a book when he dumped me. Now I had enough distance to read it. It was a biography of Paul Farmer, a hero in the public health field. I had never studied public health, but reading the book was an inspiration. I started making connections between the living conditions of the world’s urban poor and health outcomes. I was fascinated by the idea that housing and the built environment can impact your health. This sparked my Fulbright research proposal idea.

I started pouring through online articles and books on how cities shape our health. For the first time, I looked around at my environment and made connections to my own health. I had never thought about how my asthma might be linked to the low-income, highly polluted community where I grew up. I started to see all around me the negative health effects that low-income communities of color face.

Since I couldn’t find a job, I invented one.

A friend started a news blog about our community called the Wilmington Wire and I joined. I began putting into practice what I was learning in my Fulbright application research by blogging and making YouTube videos. I explored the region's high incidence of asthma, and its relationship to the nearby port and refineries. I was no expert, but doing lots of reading and talking to people. I became the KQED Wilmington community health correspondent for their blog which helped me engage in a broader dialogue about health equity in communities of color.

This was the start of a career focused on health equity.

I met with Adriana throughout the summer. She gave me mini-assignments for gathering my thoughts and breaking down the Fulbright proposal into bite-sized chunks that made it feel achievable. I decided to focus on Brazil for my proposal. I had spent six weeks there the summer prior and loved it. I was interested in how the living conditions of the favelas, the slums of Rio, impacted people’s health.

I found a public health NGO, CEDAPS, doing the most innovative community engagement work in the favelas. I structured my entire research proposal around working with them as a participant observer to study their methods and bring back what I learned to my own community.

Adriana told me that the process of applying to the Fulbright is rewarding in itself, even if you don’t get the award. I had no idea the effect it would have on me. Writing my proposal gave me clarity on what I wanted to do with my life and set me up on a new career trajectory. During the process, I discovered dual masters programs in city planning and public health that aligned perfectly with my new interests. While in Brazil I also met the Director of the dual MPH/MCP program at Berkeley, who ended up become my grad advisor.

Facilitating a youth mapping exercise in the community of 29 de Março in Cosmos, Rio de Janeiro.

The next year, I moved to Rio de Janeiro to start my Fulbright research. I had never so much as taken a public health or city planning class and now I was working with a leading public health NGO studying both in the field. The staff at CEDAPS was patient with me as I learned Portuguese and gave me incredible insight and access to the public health field in Rio. I was able to apply the community engagement methods I was learning from CEDAPS towards a pilot project partnered with the nonprofit YouthBuild International. I led a group of 34 youth in evaluating the health aspects of their community through hands-on exercises and field work. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had invented my own version of design-thinking and community participatory design methods, which I called architecture with youth! We did lots of visioning exercises, hand-mapping, and model making for them to envision their future community. Working with youth was not written in my proposal, but this work emerged as I developed relationships and followed my interests.

It’s now been 10 years since that summer I was living at home working on my Fulbright application. I’m so grateful to my past-self for taking the chance on applying for the Fulbright and for the experiences that led me to this career focused on creating healthy, more equitable cities. I’m so passionate about more people having access to the Fulbright that I created Win A Fulbright, an online resource hub to support people in applying successfully for a Fulbright.