SCHOLARS 2018
Haley Anderson is a rising junior studying Urban Community Health Sciences at Charles R. Drew University in Los Angeles, California. Her education/career goals are to complete her undergraduate education (UCHS) at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science (CDU) and continue her studies at CDU by applying for the MPH program. Haley ultimately plans to attend medical school to become an Obstetrician-Gynecologist (OB-GYN) who serves underserved communities and advocates for improved health in historically disadvantaged communities. Haley is passionate about, and committed to the ideal of community well-being. In her free time, she loves working out, trying new restaurants, volunteering in my community and shopping.
Rachel Dagbovie was born and raised in Togo. She moved to California about 8 years ago to pursue a higher education. She is now a graduating senior at Sacramento State University majoring in Biological Sciences. Her ultimate goal is to get a MPH with a focus on global health and child/maternal health in mostly Sub-Saharan countries. She am hoping to be able work with NGOs in my home country Togo to focus on health advocacy and decrease the number of people affected by preventable diseases.
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.
Patricia Méndez, a rising senior studying Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, strongly believes that in order to optimize scientific findings, there must first be an understanding of the implications of these findings on society. As such, she hopes to use her experiences from working with statistically at-risk populations to help develop platforms within the scientific community for the concerns of disadvantaged communities, all while working towards the development of more effective, affordable, and accessible treatment and prevention methods with increased flexibility amidst different lifestyles. She aspires to someday work in cutting-edge research on HIV/AIDS as a microbiologist at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Patricia has a strong interest in research on the biochemical mechanisms of HIV and other prevalent infectious diseases in order to develop more effective and versatile drugs that can reduce the number of medications in an HIV medication regimen, which in turn, may help increase drug adherence and combat new drug resistant strains of HIV. She hopes to fuse her passion for biochemistry and public health through public health microbiology and hopes to earn a Master’s in Public Health and eventually a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology.
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.