SCHOLARS 2018


Bo James Hwang is a post-baccalaureate Student at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Extension. He graduated from UCLA with a Bachelor’s Degree in Gender Studies and Asian American Studies. Bo aspires to pursue a career in clinical medicine and provide queer and gender-affirming care. He hopes to intersect medicine with social justice and public health.

Diane Neypes is a rising senior at Azusa Pacific University where she is working on earning her Bachelors of Science in Nursing. Upon graduation and obtaining licensure as a Registered Nurse, she plans on working with clients in the community setting. Diane hopes to bridge gaps in healthcare by ensuring all people, especially those who are marginalized or underserved, receive quality healthcare. She plans to do this by furthering her education by earning a Master’s degree in Nursing and obtaining licensure as a Family Nurse Practitioner. She pursued the SHARP internship in order to gain a greater understanding of the research that informs nursing clinical practice. She also saw the internship as an opportunity to learn more about HIV/AIDS and explore health disparities.
Antwan Matthews is a recent graduate with a degree in Biology at Tougaloo College in Jackson, MS. Throughout undergraduate Mr. Matthews, created a student led health organization Peer HEALTH Educators to redefine the philosophy of health in communities of color. Mr. Matthews, served as serval different scholars in undergraduate, such as the Brown-Tougaloo Scholar where he studied at both institutions to attain his Bachelor’s degree. Mr. Matthews believe in restructuring the healthcare field, to involve more students of color in decisions making pertaining to ideologies for the progression in improvised communities. Mr. Matthews, innovative approaches to diversify the healthcare field reflects his experience as a student studying systemic entities and scientific-advancements. Mr. Matthews, overall objectives is to continue his education in public health and medicine to create holistic approaches to meld social determinants and medicine for positive outcomes in communities of color.
Christian Reeder is currently a sophomore Anthropology/Sociology and French double major at Spelman College. She plans to use anthropological methods as a tool in understanding the comprehensive affect society has on human behavior, and how this behavior differs, through an intersectional lense, across race, class, and gender lines. With her knowledge on participant-observation, fieldwork, and other ethnographic methods of gaining awareness, she hopes to be a Peace Corps Health volunteer in a Sub-Saharan Francophone Africa in a country like Benin. While aiding in the creation of community based HIV/AIDS educational programs in Benin, Christian wants to increase my knowledge of the world and of human behavior through a continuous process of understanding the social behaviors around HIV/AIDS through a cultural lense that differs from her own. She intends on using my experiences from the Peace Corps in an effort to gain a holistic understanding of the courses in a Master’s program in Public Health. While Christian is unsure whether I will pursue a Doctorate in Behavioral Sciences, she aims to have an academic career that best situates herself to pursue a career in Public Health research, health advocacy education, and public/global policy as it pertains to increasing vulnerable population’s accessibility to health education and resources.