Student Spotlight

Darcy Broughton & Lauren Goddard
The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University
National Primary Care Week Student Leadership Award Recipients

The RI AHEC Program office is proud to present a new student spotlight feature.  We will periodically highlight medical students in the state of Rhode Island whose summer projects were sponsored by the RI AHEC Network.  The RI AHEC program is interested in working with students to address health care disparities and health care access issues for underserved populations. 

For more information, please email or call Rob Trachtenberg, MS, Associate Director at (401) 863-2621.

RI AHEC Student Leadership

Lauren Goddard, Medical Student
The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University

What was your focus of study? What was the impact/role of RI AHEC?
 
For our summer project, we conducted a series of four health workshops at Sstarbirth, a residential facility for pregnant women recovering from addiction and their children. We focused on topics in which the women expressed interest, such as child development, child health, home safety, and postpartum nutrition. We gave the women binders with educational material on each topic and brought healthy snacks to create a fun atmosphere. RI AHEC provided us with the funding to make our project possible, and with the inspiration to reach out to a population that is underserved and marginalized in the healthcare system.

What was your favorite or most memorable part of your RI AHEC project?
My favorite part of the project was hearing from the women at Sstarbirth and seeing them interact with their children. Sstarbirth provides a wonderful environment in which the women can live with their children while working on life skills and continuing the recovery process. The women were very engaged and informed, and added depth and value to every discussion. We learned as much from them as they did from us, which was a delightful surprise.

What are your future career goals?
hope to spend my career working in women's reproductive health. I am particularly interested in family planning, and will most likely pursue an OB/GYN residency. 

What advice would you give to students interested in the RI AHEC program and primary care?
RI AHEC provides students with an opportunity to be creative in developing a project that truly interests them, with the important goal of learning about and benefiting the community of which we are a part. My advice would be to think big, and never underestimate your ability to do good work and make an impact.

Darcy Broughton, Medical Student
The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University

What was the most memorable part of your RI AHEC project and why?
I loved the opportunity to sit down and talk at length with the Sstarbirth women about health and preventative medicine topics that they were also excited about. When we see patients in a clinical setting, there is never time to spend talking at such great length about issues like nutrition, home safety, or child development. I love talking about these issues, so the Sstarbirth experience was a real luxury! I think preventative medicine is so important, and it's unfortunate that most doctor-patient interactions do not allow for the kind of dialogue that we were lucky enough to get to have at Sstarbirth.

What are your future career goals?
Right now, family medicine is at the top of my list, but I am keeping my mind open to other possibilities. I know I want to practice primary care, and I know that I want women's health to be a significant part of my practice. Ideally, I would be able to conduct public health research or health education in addition to practicing clinical medicine.

If you could give advice to students interested in the RI AHEC and primary care, what would it be?
I would strongly encourage students to work with RI AHEC—it was an enormously positive experience for us all around. As doctors, we will always be in the role of communicator and health educator, and this project was a wonderful way to hone those communication skills. As far as primary care is concerned, I am constantly amazed at the variety of hats that primary care providers wear, so it seems to me there's something to suit every aspiring doctor's taste—I hope more of my peers will seriously consider careers in the field.