This past summer, I was an intern for Birth By Us, a pregnancy and postpartum app designed to support and empower women and birthing people of color. Birth By Us is a woman-founded organization that centers community-based and equitable maternal care.
My first week as an intern focused on literature reviews related to maternal health inequities, especially those affecting birthing people of color. I also researched existing maternal health apps to analyze gaps in access and designs that Birth By Us could address. Through reviewing platforms such as Mother Goose Health, Health In Her...
Aryana Valle Portela, Advanced LEAP Scholar 2024-26
This past summer, I had the opportunity to work as a research assistant for the California Abundant Birth Project (CA-ABP), working on their Evaluation Research team. The CA-ABP provides monthly income supplements to Black and Brown pregnant individuals who meet certain prerequisites in various counties around California. If selected, participants receive monthly cash stipends for 12-18 months during the preterm and postpartum period. The Evaluation Research is a subgroup within the CA-ABP that seeks to help researchers understand how well the program is working for participants and how...
As part of my MCAH coursework, I interned with the California Consortium for Urban Indian Health. CCUIH is a non-profit dedicated to increasing and protecting access to healthcare for urban American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) people.
I worked with Policy Director Nanette Star and Berkeley alumna Allegra Simmons conducting a website audit. The CCUIH website has 30+ pages that hold information and resources ranging from services for domestic violence survivors, to COVID, to legislative policy reports. There are many diverse teams at CCUIH, all working on different...
Last semester during RRR week, some advanced LEAP scholars and MCAH graduate students volunteered at Oakland’s Ronald McDonald House for their holiday initiative Comfort & Joy. The initiative consisted of multiple free toy shops across the Bay Area for families with sick and injured children to pick out any toy they wanted for free. This location in particular was right across UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital, making it the perfect holiday stop for nearby families and...
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...
