My Worldview 

The connections between public health and research were rarely seen nor talked about in my Hispanic community of Elmhurst, Queens. What was talked about were the shared struggles among our community. When I was seven, I noticed that many of my neighbors and family members dealt with various health challenges from hypertension, healthcare coverage to food insecurity. I remember asking my neighbor, “how can these issues be cured?” My neighbor looked at me intensely, smiled, and said that the remedy to curing these public health disparities was by finding the missing puzzle piece and bringing it back to my community in Elmhurst.