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Grace Inbae Kimgikim@post.harvard.edu

Medical School Personal Statement

Medicine is a social science. This aphorism of social medicine by Rudolf Virchowconnected the chasm I felt existed between the hospital ward and the rest of society. Themetaphor had married the seemingly incompatible. The winding circulatory system, with avast maze of capillaries, resembled the streets of urban jungles. The vibrio cholerae in achilds intestine causing profuse diarrhea were linked to global capitalism resulting insometimes perverse outcomes. Physiological processes maintaining homeostasis paralleledeconomic policies for a social safety net. The neurological signals of the limbic system weremechanisms for a womans face of despair while begging for change in the New York Citysubway.

I came face to face with this woman one warm evening last July. She had tubes running outof her nostrils to an oxygen tank by her side and took wheezy breaths, with one handextended for change and the other wiping the tears from her cheeks. Unable to turn away, Ifound out that the woman, named Iris, needed the change for food. The train came to a halt,and I took Iris to a local McDonalds so she would at least have dinner that day. While shenibbled at a chicken sandwich and sipped a fruit smoothie, she shared that she had worked asa housekeeper since moving to the U.S. from Puerto Rico, until she was hospitalized twomonths ago for a musculoskeletal disorder and emphysema. At the hospital, she suffered from

panic attacks because of her precarious financial situation, but was soon discharged with theoxygen tank after primary treatment. Unable to find work or qualify for disability insurance,she could no longer pay rent and resorted to sleeping on subway cars, unwilling to enter awomens shelter. She said her local welfare office required a New York City address foreligibility for food stamps and cash assistance, and her former landlord required $140 inreturn for two weeks of rent and the rights to the address. In a clumsy attempt to help, I called311, the citys hotline, which referred me to Homeless Services, which referred me toCommon Ground, which referred me to the number for Catholic Charities, and I left amessage. Feeling overwhelmed by the bureaucratic morass and the weight of my own wallet,I pulled out $140 in $20 bills, which I folded into a piece of paper with my phone number andhanded over, with skeptical hope and words of encouragement.

I clearly remember this encounter with Iris because I had started my position as a case

manager for home health aides that same day. Ive since encountered scores of similar stories of personal and familial sicknesses and deaths, of struggling immigrants, of generational poverty, of quiet desperation in the face of biological and economic forces. I havefamiliarized myself with GED programs, social service agencies, training programs for healthcare paraprofessionals, and welfare and Medicaid offices. I provide vocational counseling,referrals and financial assistance to combat unemployment and urban poverty. I encourage

promising home health aides to pursue careers in nursing. Most of their patients, many ofwhom are also on Medicare/Medicaid, are victims of the epidemic of non-communicablediseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, stroke, Alzheimers, anddementia.

Several months after that July evening, I ran into Iris again. Her oxygen tank was gone, butshe still looked adrift in the crowded subway station. As I was in a rush to a meeting, I simply

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handed over my business card and told her to contact me about working as a home healthaide. I have yet to hear from Iris, but those chance encounters on the subway stand asglimpses of the rewards and challenges of service.

In diagnosing and working to treat the social needs of my clients as a case manager, Ivedeveloped a perspective born of days of directly providing services. This experience hasreified policies that I had before only encountered in texts. It has also solidified my desire to

become a doctor who truly cares about the world while caring for the patient, and keeps thepatient in mind while having a voice in policy discussions. In college, I studied economicsand science to gain the skills needed to help fight global poverty and eliminate preventabledeaths. I learned about economic models to explain social phenomena, the intricate structuresof the human body, the mechanisms of life and disease, and the physical laws of the universethat intimately connect humans and nature. My studies, research, shadowing and workexperiences convinced me that clinical service and health policy are inextricably linked.

I wish to enter the medical community as a physician to improve health by directly caring forpatients and illuminating optimal policies for saving lives. The opportunity to work withother health care providers, to study the contributions of generations past, to transmitknowledge to posterity, and help patients at vulnerable and critical junctures in their lives,compels me to pursue work in medicine. Another quote by Virchow, Physicians are thenatural attorney of the poor, encapsulates my desire to serve patients, like Iris and countlessothers who suffer from both economic and medical ills, in my lifes work.

Revised 6/10/2011