Erica Hinz

UConn School of Medicine, Class of 2011

I am a second-year medical student who grew up in Danbury, one of Connecticut’s largest and most culturally diverse cities.  In high school, people representing many languages and cultures surrounded me.  My own father, who teaches English as a Second Language, and grandmother, a retired Spanish teacher, are bilingual.  In addition, I traveled to Costa Rica this past summer to study and become more conversant in Spanish medical terminology.  In 2005, I graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.S.E. degree in biomedical engineering and a minor in Spanish.  My next step was to work in Chicago as a Neuromonitoring Clinician in the operating room.  My duties included monitoring the status of patients neurological and motor systems during lumbar and cervical spinal surgeries. My assignments included patient populations throughout the city, populations with little or no insurance who obtained low quality health care.  This work gave me a keen insight into our nation’s crumbling health care system.

My objectives in joining the UST are three-fold: to continue working with the underserved; to broaden my understanding of their challenges; and to better prepare myself for a future in urban health care.  Through the years, I have learned to value teamwork and collaboration among health care professionals.  A built-in benefit of being part of UST is that I have developed mentors, which is crucial as I tackle the long, hard challenge of studying medicine.  The combination of my language skills and travel, along with the value of participating in the UST, will better equip me to help those who have fallen through the cracks of our current health care system