Dispatch from a Baylor Summer Fellow | Isabel Miles
When I think of global health, my mind typically goes to international medicine and global medical missions. I often associate it with large-scale health issues like HIV and Ebola, problems that cross borders and affect populations worldwide. Rarely, however, do I consider the United States as part of that global health picture. This summer, my internship at CrossOver Healthcare Ministries has challenged that perspective. CrossOver serves patients from 118 countries, speaking over 40 languages. Here, global health becomes local. The to-do list at CrossOver is endless, but resources are limited, and another pair of hands often is not in the budget. The inequalities are visible every day, whether that be the recent funding cuts, immigration concerns, or the many social determinants of health that affect the communities we serve. Like Dr. Karan, I find myself constantly thinking and rethinking the systems that create and sustain these inequalities.
At times, I wrestle with the discomfort of my own role. Despite working daily in the community, I return each night to a suburban home where my cohort lives. It is not as dramatic as flying home from a short-term mission trip, but the effect can feel similarly hollow. I sometimes feel like I am creating similar damage that short term mission trips do. After all, I am leaving in two months and in doing so I am leaving the same gaps that were here when I arrived. I often worry that I may be contributing to the same harm short-term missions often do: entering a community temporarily, forming connections, doing what I can, but then leaving, with the same gaps still unfilled.
The Community-Based Global Learning Collaborative's lessons remins me of what we can do, as privileged pre-med students and future medical professionals. We have the ability, and the responsibility, to confront inequality. This means showing up in underserved clinics, not to "fix" communities or to extract experience, but to help ensure that access to quality healthcare is not a privilege, but a right—no matter where a person comes from.