City of Joy
Meet our Team: Laura T. Phan, M-1
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Donation Information
As a first year medical student at the Medical College of Virginia (MCV), Laura is committed to providing quality health care to those who need it most as well as to incorporating public health disciplines into medical practices.  Laura has long been devoted to public health, particularly to improving the health of medically underserved populations.  This interest began while she was an undergraduate at the University of California at Davis, when she volunteered as an HIV counselor at the Davis Community Health Clinic in Davis, CA and as a medical assistant at the Oak Park
Community Health Center in Sacramento, CA. As an HIV counselor, she provided education and prevention counseling to individuals at high risk for contracting HIV from injecting drug use or commercial sex work.  As a medical assistant, she helped doctors and nurses at a public health clinic to care for the most indigent patients in the area�many of whom were immigrants and migrant workers and their children, who faced countless difficulties with access to health care because of financial, cultural, and language barriers.  While volunteering at these clinics, she saw how important it was for these clinics and health care providers to exist.  Without them, these patients would not have a place to turn to for medical attention and remain medically neglected.  Laura has learned from these experiences that no person should ever be without medical care.  She wants to continue to be a part of a team to help fill that void of access to care and thus has volunteered to be a part of the City of Joy project.

Laura also hopes that someday she will be a part of the bigger solution to access of care.  This aspiration prompted her to pursue a Masters in Public Health (MPH) with a concentration in Health Policy at Yale University a few years ago.  While studying for her MPH, she also became involved in international health, specifically in HIV education and prevention in Southeast Asia.  She traveled to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam in the summer of 2000 to evaluate the first needle exchange program in the country.  She interviewed 200 injecting drug users between the ages of 18 and 25 to understand their HIV risk behaviors and how to address their risks as well as their overall health needs.  Laura feels that the experience of interacting with these individuals and learning about them and, more importantly, from them was the most enriching event of her life.  That experience helped lead her to MCV and to realize what kind of a doctor and member of society she aspired to become.  Laura believes that the opportunity to meet people of another culture and society and to help understand and meet their health needs will be a tremendous addition in her medical and personal learning.
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