Megan Lo is a second-year student in the T.H. Chan School of Medicine at UMass Chan Medical School with an appetite for adventure, whether she’s snowboarding in Massachusetts or tracking patients in Bolivia.
Lo grew up in Arlington and majored in biology at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California. Lo’s parents, a veterinarian and a retired pediatric gastroenterologist, inspired her to pursue medicine. Before medical school, she volunteered for hospitals, clinics and community centers in Panama, Nicaragua and Ecuador. She joined the Global Health Pathway to continue learning about health and wellbeing from different perspectives.
“Everyone comes from a different background and brings so much to the table in terms of learning about global health and different settings, or even in the context of Worcester,” Lo said.
Through the Global Health Pathway, Lo connected with Richard Moser, MD, professor of neurological surgery. Dr. Moser is president of Solidarity Bridge‘s Neurosurgery & Neurology Institute, and arranged for Lo to spend the summer with another partner of the nonprofit, pediatric neurologist Victor Cuéllar, MD.
“For six weeks, I helped create a registry of patients at the Hospital de Niños in Santa Cruz in the neurology department,” Lo said. “They only had paper records, so I helped the doctor start an electronic database for incoming patients to track comorbidities and risk factors that may interact with their epilepsy diagnoses.”
Lo, who started to learn Spanish in middle school, was thrilled to hone her language skills abroad while learning new things in the medical field. When in Worcester, she co-leads an optional enrichment elective called Wilderness Medicine, geared toward teaching first- and second-year medical students to manage injuries and illnesses in wilderness and recreational environments. Lo hopes to work in Nepal her fourth year of medical school.
Learn more about Lo in this Student Spotlight video.
The Student Spotlight series features UMass Chan Medical School students in the Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Tan Chingfen Graduate School of Nursing and T.H. Chan School of Medicine. For more information about UMass Chan Medical School and how to apply, visit the Prospective Students page.
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