Kate Kubler

UConn School of Medicine, Class of 2012

Although I am most recently from Los Angeles, I grew up in a small town in Connecticut where most of my peers were first generation college graduates.  After attending Carleton College in Minnesota for my B.A. in Biology, I made my move to Los Angeles. While living in L.A., I trained and worked as a behavior therapist for children with special needs and interned weekly in a pre-medical program at a Los Angeles hospital and at an integrated resource clinic for the Hollywood area homeless. The enormous patient population of Los Angeles afforded me the challenge of working with extensive cultural and economic diversity. I began to develop an understanding of the complexities of the what and the how of getting treatment to the underserved and underrepresented.

I have learned that interdisciplinary healthcare is a necessary means to the end of improving how we think about serving the underserved in medicine in our own country and around the world.  It is necessary for the spiritual and physical health of a community as a whole that all community members have access to respectful, continuous health care. There is desperate need for basic preventative medicine among the underinsured and the uninsured.  Changes in how we as Americans deliver healthcare to the underserved members of our communities can and must happen at a grassroots level.  I have to believe that idealism will drive us forward, out of the dangers of complacency.  Community healthcare is rife with complexities and difficulties.  I am excited for the challenge. It is an honor to get to learn from peers across disciplines and from underserved patients through the University of Connecticut’s progressive UST.