Feinberg
Northwestern Medicine | Northwestern University | Faculty Profiles

News Center

  • Categories
    • Campus News
    • Disease Discoveries
    • Clinical Breakthroughs
    • Education News
    • Scientific Advances
  • Press Releases
  • Media Coverage
  • Podcasts
  • Editor’s Picks
    • COVID-19
    • Cardiology
    • Cancer
    • Neurology and Neuroscience
    • Aging and Longevity
    • Artificial Intelligence in Medicine
  • News Archives
  • About Us
    • Media Contact
    • Share Your News
    • News Feeds
    • Social Media
    • Contact Us
Menu
  • Categories
    • Campus News
    • Disease Discoveries
    • Clinical Breakthroughs
    • Education News
    • Scientific Advances
  • Press Releases
  • Media Coverage
  • Podcasts
  • Editor’s Picks
    • COVID-19
    • Cardiology
    • Cancer
    • Neurology and Neuroscience
    • Aging and Longevity
    • Artificial Intelligence in Medicine
  • News Archives
  • About Us
    • Media Contact
    • Share Your News
    • News Feeds
    • Social Media
    • Contact Us
Home » Student Makes Strides for Health Equity
Education News

Student Makes Strides for Health Equity

By Will DossOct 22, 2018
Share
Facebook Twitter Email
Stephen Whitfield, a fourth-year student, is involved in a range of activities to promote health equity in the Chicago area.

Growing up in a suburb of Chicago, Stephen Whitfield, a fourth-year student, had limited exposure to health inequalities. Residents of Whitfield’s neighborhood in Palatine, Illinois, were relatively wealthy and secure in food, housing and healthcare.

It wasn’t until he enrolled at Feinberg and moved to Chicago that Whitfield began to develop a greater perspective on social and economic justice, and started using his position as a medical student to make a difference.

As Whitfield begins his fourth year at Feinberg, he’s been involved in several student organizations and activities related to health equity, and hopes to bring this sensibility to his future clinical practice as he applies for residency positions in family medicine.

Read a Q&A with Whitfield below.

What are your medical or research interests?

I am interested in a broad-spectrum type of medicine, being able to treat people with a wide variety of different conditions, in different social situations. I am looking at federally qualified health centers as a potential location. There are also lots of innovative payment models that people are working with, where they try to do home visits and see the same people in and out of the hospital.

I think the clinical practice is an essential part of how we move towards health equity as a system. I think it’s inadequate in and of itself, but I think that if you’re not practicing it day to day, that’s a problem.

Why are you concerned with health equity?

When I was young, the principles were there; I think everybody grows up with ideas of fairness, but we have different levels of understanding about what that means — what it looks like and different perspectives on which groups of people are most impacted by inequity.

Growing up in the area I did, I had a relatively limited perspective on racial and economic justice because they were somewhat abstract. Frankly, almost everybody in my neighborhood was a relatively high-income white person.

It was more in college and since moving to Chicago and starting medical school that I’ve been gradually developing my own awareness and skills for being involved in the work.

How have you worked towards health equity at Feinberg?

There is an intersex activist in Chicago who I heard give some speeches, which led me to submit a resolution through the American Association of Family Practitioners (AAFP) Student Congress. The resolution, guided by this activist’s language, declares that the AAFP is against the performance of medically unnecessary genital surgeries in intersex children. The resolution was recently adopted by the AAFP board of directors.

I also helped organize a demonstration in support of the Affordable Care Act last year, along with several others, including third-year medical students Jordan Rook, Arturo Salow, Andrea Henricks and Michelle Gorecki.

In addition, I am part of the Augusta Webster, MD, Office of Medical Education (AWOME) Inclusion and Bias Task Force. The task force’s goal is to comb through every aspect of the curriculum and look for opportunities to teach students to recognize where bias exists in themselves and in the system, attempt to change it and move all of medical education and medical practice in a direction that is more inclusive of everyone’s health needs and abilities.

How would an interested student get involved?

Any students who are interested in this type of work can feel free to talk to me, but I’m no expert. Everybody’s continually learning, but I’m very new at a lot of this.

I want students to know that AWOME is genuinely very passionate about all of this work and has been very supportive of and very interested in student input. If anyone has ideas about how they want to see the Feinberg community changed, I encouraged them to get involved with the Inclusion and Bias Task Force, or to speak with the deans in any other capacity.

Students interested in working on issues bigger than Feinberg might consider following relevant community organizations on social media or attending local events to learn about their ongoing projects.

Community Engagement Education Health and Lifestyle Medical Education Public Health Students
Share. Facebook Twitter Email

Related Posts

Sex-Specific Mechanisms for Major Depressive Disorder Identified in Response to Dysregulated Stress Hormones

Mar 23, 2023

AOA Honors New Members

Mar 20, 2023

Celebrating Feinberg’s 2023 Match Day

Mar 17, 2023

Comments are closed.

Latest News

Sex-Specific Mechanisms for Major Depressive Disorder Identified in Response to Dysregulated Stress Hormones

Mar 23, 2023

Pre-Surgery Immunotherapy May Increase Survival in Advanced Melanoma

Mar 23, 2023

Hormone Therapy Plus Current Treatments Improves Survival in Prostate Cancer

Mar 22, 2023

How ChatGPT Has, and Will Continue to, Transform Scientific Research

Mar 21, 2023

New Directions for HIV Treatment

Mar 21, 2023
  • News Center Home
  • Categories
  • Press Release
  • Media Coverage
  • Editor’s Picks
  • News Archives
  • About Us
Flickr Photos
20230317_NM651
20230317_NM610
20230317_NM569
20230317_NM537
20230317_NM331
20230317_NM323
20230317_NM316
20230317_NM336
20230317_NM626
20230317_NM662
20230317_NM655
20230317_NM642

Northwestern University logo

Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

RSS Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Flickr YouTube Instagram
Copyright © 2023 Northwestern University
  • Contact Northwestern University
  • Disclaimer
  • Campus Emergency Information
  • Policy Statements

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.