Project overview
My name is Karen Guzman. I am a senior at Smith College majoring in Biochemistry with a minor in Latin American Studies. It is my profound interest in medicine that has led me to this project.
Health is a fundamental human right meaning everyone should have access to the health services they need, when and where they need them regardless of race, age, class, ethnicity, or any other factor. However, in the United States, the fight over health resources becomes a struggle over social membership and belonging within the nation-state. In other words, healthcare is rationed by your ability to pay. In marginalized communities, people are unable to afford decent health insurance or cannot receive any insurance at all due to their citizenship status. In other cases, there is a general distrust in the public health system as it has left people feeling undeserving of care. As a result, going to the doctor or hospital becomes a last resort, and people too often disregard their health needs.
For my LAS 310 Seminar: Senior Capstone project, I wanted to be able to create a health resource database that would help bridge access to care. One of the major problems with the lack of access is people, undocumented immigrants in particular, not knowing what safe and affordable services are available to them. With this in mind, I have been working on a database containing low-cost health resources that health workers can use to inform and refute misinformation that scares people away from accessing services. Giving healthcare workers rather than community members access to this database might reduce the confusion and stress from people having to look for available resources, themselves. At the same time, it helps to establish trust between health workers and people navigating a health system that doesn’t include them and daily erases their needs.
I will also be working to make the information available in Spanish for increased accessibility.
To access the project which includes the database and mapping of health centers visit: Healthcare Resources in Los Angeles.
Acknowledgements
I want to give a special thanks to Michelle Joffroy and Elizabeth Farfán-Santos for their continual support and guidance with this project. I also want to thank Abril Navarro and Travis Grandy for helping me with the technical aspects of this project.