Advocacy

How can medical trainees make medicines more affordable?

Health professionals encounter patients everyday who are unable to afford their medications. It can lead to a feeling of helplessness, for both the health provider and patient involved. But, you can take steps to put patients over profits through advocacy! Justin Mendoza, State Partnerships Manager at Families USA, shares that he was looking up a...

Student activisim: Where do I begin?

By: Maria Filippa Trikantzopoulou Politics has never been on my radar. After all, I have a degree in engineering and just began a career in medicine; it never occurred to me that I could be involved in policy-making and grassroots organizing.   Well, at least that is what I thought—until I came to realize how...

Connecting the Dots: AIDS Advocacy at Home and Abroad

By: Mariah Gray I met the little orphan boy in his home in an Addis Ababa slum. He lived there with his older sister – or maybe she was just a kind town girl that took him in. Regardless, she was young, she was his caretaker, and she was living with Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS)....

Healthcare for All Virginians: VCU SOM Students Support Medicaid Expansion

By: Kevin Kurack Medicaid expansion has always been an issue very close to my heart as a future health care professional. Over the past few summers, I volunteered at Remote Area Medical (RAM) – a traveling free health care clinic in Wise County, Virginia—the heart of Appalachia coal-country. Thousands of uninsured Virginians come to RAM...