Growing up, Emma Dudley listened to stories from her mother, a social worker, about families she served. They faced intersectional boundaries around access to transportation, lack of housing and language barriers when navigating the health care system. When Dudley decided to study medicine, she knew she wanted to address those issues.
“It kind of got me fired up from a young age about topics like that,” Dudley said.
A native of Syracuse, New York, Dudley graduated in 2018 from the University of Rochester, where she studied Spanish and molecular genetics. Now a second-year medical student in the T.H. Chan School of Medicine’s Urban Health Scholars Pathway, she aims to practice community-focused medicine, working with vulnerable and urban populations.
“There are many facets of health care that I think the clinical picture doesn’t always take into consideration,” she said. “So many people face disparate health outcomes because they don’t have access to a car and that should really be taken into consideration when we look at disparities in health.”
Dudley is a volunteer for the Worcester Refugee Assistance Project (WRAP), an organization that assists locally settled refugees and connects them to resources. Through this program, Dudley has been a mentor to a local youth, which she said has been the highlight of her medical school experience.
“We do really frequent calls and I get to hear how his family is doing, how school is going,” she said. “We’ll do a Netflix party and watch movies together. It was a really meaningful connection to make with a young person who’s trying to go to college during a pandemic and navigate these really nuanced boundaries and obstacles.”
At UMass Chan Medical School, Dudley researches populations in recovery court, which is a specialized court session that helps defendants maintain stability, achieve recovery and avoid incarceration by providing social services and mental health treatment. Dudley reads interview transcripts as participants start out to get a sense of what their obstacles are, such as family support, transportation access and community support.
Dudley is hoping to enter either the women’s health or primary care field.
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.
Related UMass Chan news stories:
MD student examines social determinants of health screening tools in emergency departments
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With a focus on human rights, medical student aims to give voice to unseen, unheard
