My Goal (for now)

Dartmouth asked me to describe my goals and dreams for the future for advising purposes so I suppose I will take an excerpt out from my response:

I saw a woman today who was suffering: eyes bulging out of their sockets, body emaciated, legs so weak she could not stand. Although we went through the motions of an HIV test, we did not have to look at her chart to know the result: she was HIV positive.

I decided to become a physician in order to equip myself with the tools to help patients like this. However, the experience of watching patients die in South Africa this summer has taught me that even as a physician, I will lack the tools to treat the underlying causes of disease: unemployment, poverty, malnutrition, drugs, violence, conflict.

My ambition is to find ways to treat both socioeconomic ills as well as the diseases afflicting the poor and sick. Currently, I would like to start my own organization providing health care and micro-loans to the poor and sick. This organization would have both a clinical and social objective. Clinically, it would aim to improve the health outcome of HIV positive patients by increasing access to ARV drugs and health counseling in under-resourced communities. Socially, it would help the poorest of these patients generate income through micro-loans. These two objectives would reinforce one another, for instance the loans would make provision of drugs sustainable as the patients would make contributions from their interest payments to the cost of drugs. It would also create economic incentive for the patients to remain healthy and productive. Ultimately, the goal of this clinic would be to show poor people that they can take charge of their own health and lives and that they do not need to depend on government handouts.

The point of this exercise is to be idealistic of course and I am sure this will change as time goes on but for now, I think its a pretty good target to shoot for. Now if I could just make money doing it . . . :)