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Student Spotlight: Daniel Beckerman, M.D./M.P.H. Candidate

Daniel Beckerman, a second-year M.D/M.P.H. candidate, traveled to San Cristóbal, Dominican Republic with Medical Students in Action (MSA), a student-led, medical mission organization that is dedicated to serving the people in rural areas in the Dominican Republic. Beckerman joined the Public Health Team within the organization and addressed the social determinants of health in San Cristóbal, formed partnerships with the CDC and the Ministry of Health, as well as provided medical follow up to patients without access to care.

“I had spent a lot of time studying global health and global health ethics in the classroom and I really wanted to migrate away from the theory and into global health practice,” Beckerman said. “I wanted to understand the problems that are facing communities and work together with them to be able to see if we can address some of the factors that are affecting them.” 

The goals of the Public Health Team were to discover and address the social determinants of health in the area, provide year-round follow up and attention to patients without access to care, offer education on medical issues, safe sex, hygiene, nutrition and women’s health, and collaborate with a team of local community health workers, and government agencies. 

Building capacity with community health workers, who are people who contribute their time and are trained to deal with the health problems of those who live in the area, is important because it gives them a greater sense of ownership. 

“If we don't have continued contact with members in the community and beyond, they can have insight into the community and can help communicate messages and make sure that that everything's fully understood and that the patients understand what has been communicated to them,” Beckerman said.

Beckerman and his team were also able to provide the community health workers with medication, glucometers and blood pressure cuffs to be able to treat, follow up and monitor the blood sugar levels of patients with diabetes or hypertension.

“We also provided sexual education to those in the community. STDs are very stigmatized and teenage pregnancy is also very common in the Dominican Republic. A lot of young girls get pregnant as early as eleven or twelve years old,” Beckerman said.

The Ministry of Health and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the Dominican Republic were helpful to the Public Health Team in helping them reach their mission trip objectives. 

The Ministry of Health allowed them to go on the trip and helped them understand the endemic problems of the surrounding area. The agency also helped them navigate critical patients into care and understand the services offered at different hospitals in the Dominican Republic.

With the CDC, they learned about urgent priorities in the area, including migrant health, HIV, Malaria, and tuberculosis. They also spoke with lab specialists about the national protocol for testing and treatment.

"We were able to move from a very ground-up approach, working with the communities and the people that constitute them, to also working with government agencies and seeing what was being done from a top-down approach," Beckerman said. 

Another initiative that MSA provides is being able to donate supplies. Oftentimes patients have significant disabilities, but they do not have the supplies to be able to take care of themselves.

“We were able to gather donations and provide wheelchairs and crutches and supplies to the communities. If there is an older person using a broken pediatric wheelchair where they barely fit, then you can really just change the quality of somebody's life quite instantly by giving them the chair that they end up spending most of their day in,” Beckerman added.

Beckerman, a San Francisco, Calif. native, is a double University of California at Berkeley alumnus. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in biology with a minor in music and in 2018, he also graduated with a Master of Translational Medicine. 

Written by Amanda Torres
Published on August 20, 2019