Name: Madison Salgado
Year: 2nd
Major: Biological Sciences with a minor in Medical Anthropology
Position: Social Coordinator
Biography: Hello! This is my first year as a part of the DIM student coordinator team and I am so excited to be involved with this organization! I am from Brea, California and I am an aspiring physician, specifically an aspiring endocrinologist. Coming from a family with a history of chronic illness I am extremely passionate about not only bringing awareness to such diseases, but also very interested in educating about how illness impacts individuals from different socioeconomic backgrounds, gender identities, and more. I am currently a member of Project ICHOR, focusing on chronic illness prevention and outreach through workshops and articles featured on our website. I also serve as UCI’s California Health Professional Student Alliance (CaHPSA) Project White Coat Coordinator, where I train other members to become Covered California Certified Application Counselors (CAC) to assist people in signing up for health insurance, focusing specifically on assisting single-payer individuals. I am currently a Covered California CAC as well. In my free time, I love baking, crafting, and spending time with friends, family, and my super cute puppy Mimi!
What Diversity Means to Me: Diversity is not just about bringing together people from varying cultural backgrounds and identities, but ensuring that they are able to succeed in the space they are brought into, whether this is in higher education, the workforce, and more. While diversity is about representation, it extends beyond that and should also focus on inclusion and cultivation of the talents and ideas that are brought forth from diverse communities. Thus, diversity is about uplifting individuals from several different intersectional identities and providing them with the opportunities to thrive in any of their endeavors, professional or otherwise.
What I Gained From the Class: The most valuable thing I gained from this class was learning about how my local community is affected by social determinants of health, an exhaustive list of factors that determine an individual’s health outcomes that includes access to education, economic stability, and even the neighborhood one grows up in. After growing up in Orange County my entire life, it was jarring to hear lectures from experts whose work was focused on healthcare disparities specifically in Orange County. One of the most heartbreaking things I learned was that in a ranking system determining how accessible basic needs are to a community, Anaheim consistently had the lowest rankings in almost all of Orange County despite being the center of one of the country’s major tourist destinations, Disneyland. Learning about how extreme the disparities are just in my local community has only bolstered my passion in advocating for health equity, especially while serving my local community!