United States
I am a fourth-year medical student at Northwestern. I am passionate about medical education, mentorship in radiology, and advocating for fellow first-generation medical students. I have conducted research on women's imaging, pediatric MSK pathologies, CE-MRA segmentation of the aorta, radiology education, and health disparities in type II diabetes. I’m an avid learner and teacher—whether leading ultrasound workshops for medical students, teaching reproductive health education in Pakistan, or translating for patients at free clinics in the United States. In my free time, I love to create art, cook and write poetry.
I worked closely with the Dean of Education, faculty, and students to develop a culturally sensitive reproductive health curriculum, teaching 100+ rural teenagers about contraception, consent, and intimate partner violence to help them make informed choices. I also conducted interviews with 10+ nurse midwife students to understand barriers to reproductive health and translated Urdu community newsletters on outcomes at the free women’s hospital.
I conducted semi-structured interviews and analyzed survey data using NVivo, SAS, and REDCap software. I wrote literature reviews, organized surveys, drafted tables, and provided administrative support for the research team. I collaborated closely with physicians, nurses, and social workers to prepare monthly newsletters and webinars. I presented our research at the Seventh Annual Symposium for Chronic Disease and the Region II Medical Education Conference.
SOUL is a student coalition building solidarity with blue-collar workers on campus and in the South Side of Chicago. Getting to know workers has by far been the most valuable and humbling part of this work. Leading a fair wage campaign for SOUL through interviews with janitors and cafeteria workers showed me how all injustice is interconnected. During the pandemic, we have been fundraising virtually to ensure our workers get paid. SOUL has taught me to leverage my positionality in the world for justice and to advocate for marginalized members of my community.
As director, I conducted a community health needs assessment at a local South Side church and helped develop a curriculum for a 6-month healthy aging program tailored to elderly Black participants. We partnered with diabetes, dementia and nutrition specialists from UChicago to host educational talks at the church, where I led hands-on workshops on chair yoga, art therapy and healthy cooking and distributed cookbooks and blood pressure kits. On campus, I organized teach-ins with 50+ people on food deserts and neighborhood health, focusing on the lack of affordable food and clean drinking water in Flint and Chicago as issues of medical racism and healthcare access. I explored the intersections of medicine and structural violence, by using an environmental justice lens to describe how centuries of redlining have pushed Black neighborhoods near factories and landfills, leading to asthma and other health concerns.
I worked at a theater in Pakistan that served as an educational platform for community health education. Besides performing skits, we organized seminars, workshops and lectures on reproductive health topics for at-risk groups in the slums of Lyari and Orangi in Karachi. I worked with a large team of performers, designers, and educators on projects to address misconceptions on menstruation, sexually transmitted diseases, birth control and more. I transcribed and translated 15+ songs, dances, and skits and documented literacy festivals and cultural diversity tours. Through these experiences, I learned creative approaches to tackling public health challenges and gained confidence in collaborating effectively with a team.