I got to work with Brooke on creating tweets to promote Professor Michael Santoro's case study that discussed the advent of the Roots Community Health Center in the South Bay. This topic was a super interesting way to dive into the ethics of healthcare and social justice; as an Environmental Studies double major, I tend to focus on racial equity in the context of environmental justice, so it was exciting to look into this issue from a new field.
My work focused on how Roots has been successful within the communities of color in Oakland and the South Bay, particularly through their use of "navigators" who help patients overcome language and cultural barriers by attending appointments with them. One of the most striking things Professor Santoro's case study found was how these navigators were treated at the appointments: many of them are also people of color, and sometimes they are not differentiated from their clients and thus experience the same disgraceful treatment from medical personnel based on racial and cultural assumptions.
This case was very eye-opening to me, and I appreciate that I have a more interdisciplinary understanding of racial inequities within healthcare through doing this project. This is a topic I highly recommend learning about, even if you are like me and don't have much background in the medical field.