National Health Corps Philadelphia Blog

My undergraduate education in public health provided me with a textbook understanding of holistic healthcare and the impact of social issues on health, but I wanted to see what this meant in reality. So far during the course of my service term as a patient advocate at Health Center 4, I felt as though I’ve received a crash course in the true meaning of social determinants of health.

“I felt lucky to work on the front lines of enrolling people during this time. I felt the pain of looking at a plan that suddenly became unaffordable. I felt the joy of telling someone who had been uninsured for years that they would finally be able to see the doctor they’d been holding off on.”

“If it wasn’t for the Marketplace, I wouldn’t have medical insurance”. As an Insurance Specialist at Health Center #6, I have heard this statement many times over the past six weeks.

“This lengthy process opened my eyes to the many different obstacles (linguistic, political, and procedural) that patients must hurdle in order to receive quality health care.”