Diversity Reflective Statement

Diversity has always fascinated me. Growing up, I learned about the various dimension of one’s identity such as race, age, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, physical and mental ability, and even occupation, and how these dimensions impact their values, beliefs and experiences. I am interested in studying the connection between values and beliefs held due to identity, and health care policy. My experiences in diversity have helped me develop research interests in aging policy, access to care interventions, addressing disparities, and patient and stakeholder engagement in the policy process.
My interest in diversity and policy first merged during my experience as a Peer Dialogue Leader for the Common Ground Multicultural Dialogue Program. …show more content…
I worked for AARP in their State Advocacy and Strategy Integration on the State Health and Family Team. On this team, I helped them tracked variation of the Caregiver, Advise, Record, Enable (CARE) Act from state to state. This encouraged me to write a paper in my Policy Process course about how the Advocacy Coalition Framework applies to the CARE Act’s passage across states. In this paper, I wrote about how organizations in favor of and opposed to the legislations acted as members of coalitions, competing and working within the framework. I presented this paper at the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management’s Regional Student Conference. It was through my current position at Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), on the stakeholder engagement team, where I truly learned about the intricate relationship between the various healthcare stakeholder groups, their values and beliefs, and how they choose to engage with others as it relates to decision …show more content…
While studying Anthropology at University of Maryland, College Park, I worked with the Anthropology of the Immigrant Life Course Program. I learned essential skills in qualitative analysis, such as interviewing, case studies, and participant-observation. I transcribed, coded and analyzed interviews that I helped conduct. These efforts contributed to the publication of Contemporary Conversations on Immigration in the United States: The View from Prince George 's County, Maryland by the program’s director, Judith Freidenberg. These same analyses led to my honors thesis, “Cultural Perceptions of the Maryland DREAM Act in Prince George’s County”, in which I drew on the concept of enculturation, and theories from human development to identify social factors and dimensions of identity that influenced perceptions of the Maryland DREAM Act on residents of Prince George’s county. Dr. Freidenberg also acted as my advisor and committee chair in this honors program. Through this program I assembled a committee, defended a thesis proposal, conducted interviews and archival analysis, and defended my thesis. I presented preliminary results at Society for Applied Anthropology, “Enculturation of Perceptions of the DREAM