Meet Toni Ramirez '08 MD'12
Growing up in El Paso, Texas, Toni Ramirez '08 MD'12 had seen a pediatrician regularly until around the second grade. After that–like most of the children she knew–she visited the local walk-in clinic, and only when she got sick. But in high school, Ramirez decided to become a doctor. It seemed like a good career choice for a high-achieving, high-energy kid.
Her guidance counselor was less than encouraging. "It's very competitive," she said. Ramirez's resolve grew. A friend of her brother's had been accepted to Brown's Program in Liberal Medical Education (PLME), and–with the support of her family and the help of a teacher– Ramirez submitted an application.
By fall, she was taking her Texas-sized dreams to the smallest state in the Union. It was right about then that she started to sense the full implications of what she'd gotten herself into. Just as she was starting her freshman year at Brown, her father lost his job–and her family lost its health insurance. Ramirez started to consider the economics of health care.
Somewhere along the way, her vision of a career in medicine stopped being about achievement and started being about empathy. "I realized that most of the people I knew back home didn't have health insurance, even though a lot of them worked two or three jobs," Ramirez says. "I started thinking about how important it is for doctors to understand how the totality of their patients' lives affect the way they interact with the health care system–why people cut up pills, or why they may not show up for a follow-up appointment."
Ramirez continued to explore those issues as an undergraduate community health concentrator, volunteering as an interpreter at the Rhode Island Free Clinic and doing other community service projects.
The social justice side of health care was still on her mind when she entered medical school four years later. And she was even more convinced that good doctoring would depend on a solid foundation in the big-picture challenges that affect the day-to-day delivery of care. She and other students developed a new pre-clinical elective "Health Care in America," that examines these challenges. It debuted in 2009, and about 25 percent of all first- and second-year students enrolled.
Ramirez expects to return to El Paso someday. "I hope to pursue a career in family medicine and to ultimately establish a community-based practice," she says. She carries a vision of a full-service clinic—a medical home where people can ask questions, access social services, and escape from the kind of episodic, crisis-oriented care often received by people who have too many bills to pay.
Ramirez recognizes that financial support is critical to these plans. "Receiving scholarship support has allowed me to focus on my studies with minimal regard or worry about financial ability," she says. "The generosity of donors will allow me to fulfill my goals."
Adapted from "What Kind of Doctor Will You Be?" Brown Medicine magazine http://bit.ly/uGACsK