Class Of 2025

Hopkins Community Connection at the Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center, Baltimore, MD

Applied Experience, Spring 2024

1.) Briefly describe what you did for your Applied Experience and any highlights.

For my Applied Experience, I worked at the Hopkins Community Connection at the Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center (JHOC) under the supervision of my wonderful mentor & friend, Natalia Camargo. At the Hopkins Community Connection, or simply just HCC, we are tasked with working with a client list of up to ten patients to address their specific community-based needs. The biggest motivation behind HCC includes addressing the social determinants of health, which encompasses everything in a persons life that influences their various health outcomes, including the cleanliness of their drinking water, access to healthy foods, living in a shelter with ample access to utilities, and much more. 

During my time first semester at HCC in Fall 2023, I had a starting client list of about four to five clients. All the clients that we receive are patients at the specific clinic in which the HCC desk is located in, so our patients were JHOC specific. During this time, I learned all of what HCC has to offer to address all of our clients needs (as long as their within our scope). I learned everything from how to fill out a food stamp application to how to aid clients in garnering prescription drug assistance. It was a very informative experience and I believe it was integral to making me the advocate that I am today. 

After that semester, I was assigned a caseload of about nine to eleven clients and had to put my newly garnered skills to the test to help my new clientele. With this newer, longer list of clients, I was nervous. But with the help of my amazing supervisor and talented fellow advocates, I was able to be successful in all of my encounters and looked forward to building new and strong relationships with those that I was tasked with helping. In fact, only after being in HCC for a two semester, I was selected to be a Program Coordinator for the JHOC HCC Leadership Team. This was one of my overarching goals that I set for myself in HCC and to see come to fruition is enough to make me gleeful.

I would definitely say that the main highlights of being in HCC have been the amazing interactions that I have had with clients thus far. I have grown so close to all of them, learning so much about their lives and their histories. I do not house a savior complex when interacting with my clients, rather one where I see myself as their friend and confidant if needed. One of my clients has even referred to me as their “best friend”, which made me realize that I was doing job and I was doing it well at that. 

2.) How has your experience informed your understanding of public health?

My experience at HCC has radically transformed my understanding of public health and all that it stands for. 

It’s occurred so frequently in my public health classes where a professor would present a concept or some other type of theory and we just merely write it down and do not come back to it until it’s time to study for a test or write a paper. Additionally, learning about disparities and their root causes is such a big part in public health, such as housing inequality in Baltimore known as the Black Butterfly and the distrust that the Black community has in the medical community due to the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments. 

Identifying these disparities and conducting research specific to them is very important as it lays the framework that we work off of. However, though I am not critiquing this work as I have much admiration and respect for it, how often do you see someone actually going out into the community to address these disparities that we know so much about/research about?

And this is where HCC comes in, it’s an effort to try and address these troubling disparities that we have come to know. Through a client-centered approach, we build a relationship with those we work with and constantly work with them to address their needs as they arise. Making a lasting impact on the lives that we help everyday is the most rewarding part of this initiative and it really helps you understand the importance of the integration of public health into everyday life. Without public health, would we really understand the underlying disparities existing in our communities? And as a result, would we carry out initiatives such as HCC to ensure that they are addressed?

3.) How does this experience align with your future goals?

My experience at HCC aligns with my future goals in a rather intricate way. In fact, it has somewhat impacted the way I see myself in the future. 

My dream is to become a medical oncologist one day as my experience with cancer in my family and friends has been something that I wish on no one. I always knew I wanted to be in the medical field, but what drove me to choosing oncology would be the many fatalities I have seen personally with the disease and the burden that I have noticed that it places on those close to that individual. 

Coming to Hopkins, I just had the intention of majoring in Molecular & Cellular Biology. However, after taking Introduction to Public Health with Dr. Maria Bulzachelli, I knew that public health was something that I wanted to immerse myself in, therefore I added an additional major. HCC has only furthered this interest that I have in being in the field. 

Being a part of HCC has been an eye-opening experience. I never thought of myself as a privileged person, but after being in HCC, I have come to accept this. Though I am a limited income, first generation student, just being able to have the opportunity to go to this school is something that elevates my position in society and that is something that HCC has allowed me to accept. In working in HCC, you get to notice all the wrongs that many face due to failures in our institutions. Though many reading this have only merely seen it in a news article or a research paper, seeing these disparities play out in real time right before your eyes is something that changes you forever. 

With this newfound change in my mindset, it has allowed me to add onto my future career plans. I still want to be some sort of medical oncologist as my life’s work in academia and volunteerism has been in this field. However, HCC has opened my eyes to the vast opportunities that exists within humanitarian work. Essentially, with being an oncologist, I hope to also branch out in this work into underserved communities and pay it forward to these groups that have made me the person that I am today. 

4.) How do you think your time at JHU prepared you for this work?

I strongly believe that my time at JHU prepared me for this work. Being a public health major has been one of the most rewarding experiences that I have had in my professional career thus far. Being immersed in an environment where the centered focus is to try and understand the disparities that currently exist within our communities is nothing short of effective. Additionally, the public health department ensures that there are ample opportunities for us to go out into the real world and put these learned concepts into action by addressing the various systemic issues that we learn so much about in our coursework. Overall, I really enjoy being a public health student and I can see why this school is the leading institution in these types of studies!

Furthermore, being in HCC does come with its challenges. Some may be nervous while some may feel the most prepared when working with the Baltimore community, obviously for a myriad of reasons. Being a public health student at JHU has definitely allowed me to come out of my shell and put my passion for helping others in front of the fear that I had for interacting with new people. It also allowed me to develop a calm, empathetic way of viewing our client population as I understand the background of the issues that so many of them face. All-in-all, being a student, more specifically a public health student, has prepared me immensely for my time at HCC and has also shaped my future prospects.