Global Health: A Force For Good • Olivia Leventhal

(Medical Student, UCSF || CA USA)

“My dad and grandma passed away before I was nine. Medicine was the only way I saw to stop people from dying. I knew it was a childlike view of what medicine is, but it stuck with me. I haven’t really faltered from that. And now that I’m here, I feel like this is what I’m supposed to be doing.

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As I got older, ‘I want to do medicine’ grew into ‘What do I want to do in medicine?’ For a while I was really interested in research because my grandma died of lung cancer and I thought expanding treatments could have a big impact. But recently I’ve been exploring things related to global health — there are a lot of people doing great medical research, but not as many trying to increase access to it all. For the past 10 years, my family has been going to a rural village in Tanzania called Mlangarini to raise money for the school and help improve facilities. We are trying to redistribute wealth in a non-problematic, non-white savior way by serving as fundraisers — donating money and the people in the village decide how they want to spend it. Throughout, I’ve seen how different the healthcare system is — simple things aren’t being treated because people don’t have access to healthcare. People are dying from things that have well-established treatments. That’s why I’m trying to get involved with global health initiatives.

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I hope in the future I can split my time between seeing patients and global health policy — helping people on the small and large scales. A lot of people say, ‘Just do what you love.’ I think we should do what we love, but also help people. Trying to think critically about the path I’m going down and asking the question, ‘Is this really going to help people or not?’ That’s been my guiding force.”

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Check out the Mlangarini Project’s website below, and please consider donating to help respond to the COVID-19 pandemic in Tanzania, if you are able: http://www.mlangariniproject.org/