This summer, I had the privilege of serving as an Evaluations Intern with SisterWeb, a nonprofit doula network in San Francisco dedicated to advancing birth justice and health equity for Black families. My main project consisted of creating a three-part workshop series for obstetricians, gynecologists, and labor-and-delivery nurses in Los Angeles County. The aim was to equip medical professionals with a deeper understanding of doulas’ crucial roles and to share best practices for integrating doulas into clinical care.
The YEDI/LEAP Fellowship is an annual opportunity open to Youth Equity Discovery Initiative (YEDI) undergraduate scholars. YEDI is a program of Innovations for Youth (i4Y), “a cross-disciplinary, innovative research hub addressing issues of youth equity through collaborative research, training and community engagement.” Five fellows were selected and...
This June, I was lucky to be selected to give an oral presentation entitled “Are we missing Folx? Gender Identity Measurement in a Sample of California High School Students,” at the Society of Epidemiological Research (SER) Annual meeting in Boston, MA. This presentation was adapted from my capstone research project, which I completed this year. This study sought to compare two gender identity measures – simple and expanded – administered to the same sample of youth as part of the California Healthy Kids Survey to understand if the expanded measure better captured the population at risk...
The MCAH Alumni Community & Networking Event is an annual gathering organized by UC Berkeley’s Center of Excellence (COE) in Maternal, Child, and Adolescent Health (MCAH) with the purpose of creating opportunities for networking, reconnection, and celebrating MCAH achievements. As an undergraduate MCAH LEAP scholar, I had the privilege of serving as a student assistant and attending the event this year on October 29th at...
Julia presenting her poster on Maternal Health Communication
I was honored to return to the Association of Maternal, Child, and Adolescent Health Program (AMCHP) Annual Conference this Spring in Washington, D.C.. After participating in the AMCHP Graduate Student Epidemiology Program (GSEP...
As an MCAH LEAP Scholar, I had the privilege of participating in the National MCH Workforce Development Center's Title V Summer 2024 Internship Program, where I was placed with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment's (KDHE) Bureau of Family Health. This opportunity allowed me to spearhead KDHE’s Title V Fatherhood/Non-Birthing Partner Needs Assessment and address a critical gap in maternal and child health: the exclusion of fathers and gender-expansive non-birthing partners from MCH state action plans and entities that provide guidance for MCH priority areas....
This past summer I interned with GESMujer, a cooperative women’s organization in Oaxaca, México, as part of UC Global Health Institute’s Center for Gender and Health Justice. GESMujer is composed of twelve different communities across Oaxaca each with two promotoras representing every region in Oaxaca. GESMujer allows for the representation of all Indigenous, Mestizo, and Afro-Latine women and girls that are scattered across the country and gives them the opportunity to share the unique challenges they face in their regions. GESMujer’s mission is to promote better living conditions...
