“This is a rural community in Peru, and you see children, adults and other students. So I was a medical student at that time. These communities, we chose them because they were in need. My school was in Lima, the capital of Peru, but their community was far in the mountains, probably like a 10 hour drive. After a month of planning, our medical students group went back to the community, bringing in medical support, medications, and also we brought food. And then we were spent a week with them, trying to learn more about the community, but also trying to provide some medical support to that community.

“I learned something very valuable that I'm using right now here in Cincinnati—I learned thathaving community partners helps with providing medical care. We needed a connection between the community and the medical provider because there was a big gap. The community members were trusted more than the medical providers because the medical providers were far from their community.

“Based on my experience, and also my family experience, it is the hard-working—our community is very hard working and I saw the same thing that I was mentioning with these communities—that for them to get a better or higher education, they are very hard working, so that we translate that to me immigrating from another country to here, we bring all of that hard-working kinds of personalities.”