ABOUT
Nice to meet you! I'm Justine, a medical student at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. My interest in public health first began when, as a little girl, I noticed the inequalities in my family's home country of the Philippines. Today, that interest has brought me to the field of medicine in hopes of making world-class healthcare accessible to everyone.
My dream is to improve outcomes for cancer patients around the world, especially in communities that have been historically left out of the conversation. In my mind, this is where cancer prevention, screening, and treatment are needed the most.
EDUCATION
Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California
2021 - Present
M.D. Doctorate of Medicine
Breman Global Health Fellow
Distinction in Community Service
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University of California, Berkeley
2014 - 2018
B.A. Public Health, B.S. Business Administration
Phi Beta Kappa
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EXPERIENCE
Breman Global Health Fellow
2022
The summer after my first year of medical school, I had the opportunity to complete a fully-funded global health research internship in Kenya. Interested in non-communicable diseases, I focused on understanding healthcare perspectives on disruptions to Type 2 Diabetes care during the COVID-19 pandemic. What I found was that both patients and providers felt that the pandemic had led to fragmented care, highlighting the need to invest in resilient healthcare systems.
It was a really wonderful experience to work in an international setting for the first time, and what inspired me most was getting to meet so many smart and dedicated investigators during my time there.
EXPERIENCE
Keck Human Rights Clinic Co-Director
2022
I joined the human rights clinic at Keck because I was amazed by how the work they did was truly changing lives (with the help of medical evaluations conducted by clinics like ours, an asylum seeker's chances of being granted asylum double from 38% to 89%*). During my term, we restarted in-person evaluations at the clinic and led a health fair to provide vaccinations and health screening to Afghan refugees in partnership with the Los Angeles Department of Health. We also began a nonprofit partnership to provide COVID-19 vaccine education to immigrants in ICE detention centers, which has expanded to provide health education on other important topics. Immigrant and refugee health is very close to my heart, and I plan to continue working with this community and to conduct asylum evaluations as part of my future practice.
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*Lustig, S.L., Kureshi, S., Delucchi, K.L. et al. J Immigrant Minority Health (2008) 10: 7. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10903-007-9056-8
