Programs

Anna Francesca Alvarado – Anesthesia
Medical School: Tulane School of Medicine 

My name is Anna Francesca Alvarado and I am an MS4 from Tulane School of Medicine. I was  born in Manila, Philippines and emigrated to San Diego at the age of 10. I attended the University of California, San Diego where I majored in Human Biology and minored in Political Science.

During my undergrad years, I had the privilege to volunteer at a non-profit called Healing Hearts Across Borders, a quarterly volunteer-run clinic that offers healthcare to patients in nearby Tijuana, Mexico. I was exposed to the health disparities present within various healthcare systems and influenced my decision to pursue medicine and help address these disparities. Throughout my time at Tulane School of Medicine, I worked in organizations that further educate and address health disparities present at school and within New Orleans.

As an APAMSA president, I organized health screening clinics for members of the New Orleans community, especially for the large Vietnamese communities living in New Orleans East, where healthcare access is limited. In addition to my work as an APAMSA president, I worked as the leader of the clinical subcommittee for the RSJME. I helped develop the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (J.E.D.I) course for incoming third-year students. These J.E.D.I sessions serves as a safe space for students to discuss systemic racism and discrimination utilizing clinical cases that may be witnessed over one’s clinical training.

During my medical training, I’ve realized that anesthesiologists play a direct role as the primary patient advocate within an OR room. As an aspiring anesthesiologist, I hope to continue advocating my patients within and beyond the OR and continue the work to address health disparities impacting patient care. I look forward to meeting faculty and peers that share the same mission as I do at the SCORE program and am very excited to learn from them as I continue my medical education.

Pedro Gallardo – Anesthesia
Medical School: University of California, San Francisco SOM

My name is Pedro Gallardo and I am a fourth-year medical student at UCSF. I was inspired to become a physician by my fantastic healthcare team at Rady Children’s Hospital who treated my acute lymphoblastic leukemia. As a child who only spoke Spanish at the time of treatment, language-concordant care is important and personal.

I majored in China Studies at Stanford with a focus on the Chinese healthcare system, through which I was able to cap seven years of Mandarin study and work at China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention on diabetes and hypertension management. I also served as a Spanish interpreter and manager at Stanford’s Pacific Free Clinic. Now at UCSF, I have continued to learn about language in various settings. 

I am leading a research project analyzing the experiences of parents with limited English proficiency in the pediatric perioperative setting. I have also explored the language and imagery of cancer survivorship through appearances on The Nocturnists’ “Shame in Medicine” series and Stanford’s “Health After Cancer” series. Patient advocacy is at the center of anesthesiology. I look forward to learning more about this field and its advocates through the SCORE program.

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Fares Marayati – Anesthesia 
Medical School: Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

My name is Fares Marayati, I’m a fourth-year medical student at Mount Sinai. I was born in Aleppo, Syria, and immigrated to the US with my family in 2012. I studied psychology at Princeton, with minors in cognitive science, linguistics, and translation, with a focus on bilingual child development.

This past year, I received a Masters in Global Health at Trinity College Dublin through the Mitchell Scholarship, focusing on early interventions that shift the ways displaced children and families navigate new geographies, understanding how loss, guilt, survival, otherness, and pain interact and impact health access and care-seeking behaviors.

My medical school journey has been most influenced by my time as a Clinic Manager at Mount Sinai’s student-run free clinic for East Harlem residents without health insurance, during the peak months of the COVID-19 pandemic, finding creative ways for the continuity of remote care and daily necessities, as well as my research interest in disparities in Stroke Care access, especially ways in which institutional expansion of thrombectomy center coverage can impact those disparities.

I am eager to bring my interest in global and local health disparities to Anesthesia, specifically pediatric anesthesia, critical care, and the combined Pediatrics-Anesthesia program at Stanford, with the robust Global Anesthesia program and all of the opportunities to engage in meaningful fieldwork at the intersection of the intellectual and the procedural, in areas where access to safe Anesthesia remains limited. I am looking forward to my time at Stanford, and beyond grateful for the opportunity provided by the SCORE program, without which this wouldn’t be possible.