Student Projects
Class: Cultural Humility and Social Determinants of Health
This course will foster thoughtful dialogue on the importance of cultural humility in healthcare. Students will work to grow their cultural awareness and understanding of the social determinants of health by exploring the lived experiences of individuals. Through the utilization of skills based on the compassion science framework, students will consider how cultural humility impacts patient outcomes. An exploration of current topics in healthcare disparities will deepen classroom discussion. This course provides an added entry point into the understanding of the important place cultural humility and understanding hold in the healthcare relationship.
Class Mission Statement: At the end of the course, students created a shared mission statement to reflect what they learned and what they hope to carry forward into their future work in healthcare.
We practice compassion and humility by dedicating ourselves to lifelong learning and treating every patient with inherent dignity and gratitude. We confront systemic inequities within the communities we serve while recognizing the limits of our own perspectives.
This mission statement captures what the students learned throughout the course and reflects the students’ commitment to culturally humble, patient-centered care.
Featured Course Text: How Inequailty Kills: The Death Gap by Dr. David A. Ansell, M.D. An important text in this course was The Death Gap, which helped shape class discussion and deepen students' understanding of health inequities. By engaging with this text, students were able to better understand how the conditions in which people live profoundly affect health outcomes and access to care.
Sampling of Fall 2025 Student Projects: As part of the course, students completed projects that encouraged them to apply what they have learned about cultural humility and the social determinants of health to real communities and healthcare challenges.
Cultural Humility Persistence Plan: Students were given the opportunity to analyze the social determinants of health in a specific city or neighborhood to better understand how these factors influence individual health outcomes, local healthcare systems, and the broader social and economic environment. Through this work, students developed a deeper understanding of the relationship between social factors and health and thought critically about how public policy, social structures, and resource allocation shape health disparities.
Professional Development Module Presentations: Students also created presentations focused on how social determinants of health affect patient outcomes. These projects provided tools, recommendations, and practical strategies to help healthcare professionals identify, think through, and address these determinants in everyday practice.
Emma Campbell: Youngstown, Ohio
This Persistence Plan project focused on a city that is close to my heart: my hometown, Youngstown, Ohio. By examining factors such as income, education, environmental conditions, access to healthcare, and food security, I investigated how historical economic decline, persistent poverty, and limited healthcare resources have shaped health outcomes for residents. My home community faces many key barriers to healthcare—including transportation, insurance coverage, and shortages in mental health providers. However, this presented many potential opportunities for improvement, such as increased community outreach by existing healthcare systems, expanded preventive care, and ultimately, culturally humble patient engagement. All in all, this project has helped me realize how closely intertwined successful healthcare is with the surrounding community, and I hope to continue cultivating the virtue of cultural humility in my future medical practice.
Jenna Collier: Ohio’s Appalachian Region
Diabetes poses a severe threat to public health in the United States, with Type 2 diabetics facing increased mortality risk from cardiovascular disease and hypertension. Of the regions affected by diabetes, the southeastern Appalachian region of Ohio stands out with a diabetes prevalence more than double the national average, with several social determinants of health exacerbating the impact of diabetes in this region. My project examines the 2023 article Social Determinants and Health Disparities Pertaining to Diabetes in Appalachia (Borgemenke and Hughes). Their research seeks to better understand the relationship between social determinants and health disparities, with the goal of helping healthcare systems and policymakers in Ohio enhance the quality and accessibility of desperately needed care for this vulnerable population. Notably, the study’s results showed that Appalachian counties had higher rates of diabetes prevalence and incidence, along with less access to healthcare, compared to non-Appalachian counties, due in part to health disparities in child poverty rate, food insecurity, and socioeconomic status.
A culturally humble approach involves recognizing that such social determinants of health exist between the Appalachian and non-Appalachian counties, listening to the concerns of the Appalachian population, and working to solve the current, and ever-worsening, conditions. By practicing compassionate care in medicine, specifically recognizing and actively fighting to address and reduce these barriers to healthcare, substantial progress can be made in improving health outcomes and ensuring that all individuals receive the care they deserve.
Sean Guibord: Inner City Detroit
This project focused on how historical disinvestment and structural inequities have shaped the social determinants of health in inner-city Detroit. I investigated how these factors contribute to health disparities, including those in life expectancy, infant mortality, chronic disease, and access to resources. I also highlighted how poverty, education, food insecurity, environmental exposure, transportation barriers, and housing instability are deeply intertwined. Potential approaches were highlighted to address these SDOH through a lens of cultural humility, emphasizing community outreach, an appreciation for diversity, addressing implicit biases and integrating local resources into care. In essence, through my project, I argue that community engagement and culturally humble care are both essential to achieve health equity in Detroit.
Quinn Deitch: Los Angeles County, California
This project illustrates the effects of social determinants of health on health outcomes in Los Angeles County. Specifically, by taking into account the unique geographical and sociocultural factors at play in this region, I propose that access to transportation is a uniquely pivotal determinant of health, which disproportionately alters the ability of patients to achieve equal health outcomes. Access to private transportation greatly affects the ability of patients to receive quality and personalized care. This is due to the relatively poor public transportation infrastructure of Los Angeles County relative to other major metropolitan counties within the United States. As such, patients without access to their own private forms of transportation are reliant on inadequate and inefficient means of public transportation, which significantly impacts their ability to engage in activities that promote overall well-being, such as shopping at quality grocery stores, maintaining a pattern of regular exercise, and attending regular doctors' appointments. I propose that clinicians and health care providers within LA County who care for those without access to private transportation exercise compassion and understanding for the realities of these patients, provide these patients with resources and information to ensure their continued well-being in spite of this inherent determining factor, and advocate for the continued expansion of public transportation projects in Los Angeles.
Nicoletta Minier: Staten Island, New York
Staten Island’s opioid epidemic remains one of the most urgent and persistent public health challenges in New York City, despite the borough being the smallest and often referred to as the “Forgotten Borough.” Staten Island maintains the second-highest opioid overdose death rate in NYC, with overdose mortality approximately 170% higher than the national average. This disparity is closely connected to social determinants such as poverty, housing instability, and longstanding stigma surrounding addiction. My project focuses especially on the North Shore, where socioeconomic inequities, reduced food access, and fewer healthcare resources contribute to heightened vulnerability among culturally diverse immigrant and low-income communities.
I examined how clinicians can better support these communities [in crisis] by listening without judgment, building trust, and acknowledging the lived experiences that shape health behaviors. Exploration of local initiatives, including Hotspotting the Overdose Epidemic and the HOPE diversion program, which model compassionate, person-centered approaches to addiction care. As a future clinician, I will aim to integrate social determinants of health screening into routine practice, strengthen partnerships with community organizations, advocate for equitable behavioral-health services, and help reduce stigma surrounding mental health and substance use. Ultimately, this project highlights the critical role of culturally humble care in promoting recovery and improving health outcomes for some of Staten Island’s most overlooked populations.
